Worlds of Tomorrow v01n02 (1963 06) (LennyS EXciter)

JUNE 1963 • 50c:

SPACEMAN ON
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by

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THE TOTALLY RICH THE STAR-SENT PEOPLE OF

by KNAVES THE SEA

JOHN BRUNNER by KEITH LAUMER by ARTHUR C CLARKE

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1

JUNE 1963
Vol. 1 No. 2

ALL NEW STORIES

CONTENTS

rREDERIK POHl
Editor

SOI COHEN
Publisher

DAViD PERTON

Production

Manager

ROSEAAARIE BIANCHiNI
Art Director

DAVE GEllER ASSOC
Advertising

Cover From
A GUEST
OF GANYMEDE

NOVELEHES

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES

by Keith Laumer 8

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE

by Mack Reynolds 37

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE

by C. C. MacApp 62

THE TOTALLY RICH

by John Brenner 82

SHORT STORIES

THE END OF THE SEARCH

by Damon Knight 34

CAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA

by L. J. Stecher, Jr 105

SERIAL - Conclusion

PEOPLE OF THE SEA

by Arthur C. Clarke 114

ARTICLE

THE PROSPECTS OF IMMORTALITY
by R. C. W. Ettinger 54

First of a series that brings you an up-to-the-
minute view of The World of Tomorrow e e Todayl

FEATURES

Editorial 4

In Our Next Issue 162

WORLDS OF TOMORROW Is published bi-monthly by GALAXY PUBLISraNG
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T

Worlds of Tomorrow • Editorial

NOW THAT TOMORROW’S HERE

A s old science-fiction buffs we
have seen a number of things
translated from the stuff of science
fiction into a part of our everyday
environment — things on so broad a
spectrum that it encompasses such
diverse phenomena as broadcast tel-
evision and the manipulation of ge-
netic traits, spaceships and nuclear
energy, and the synthesis of fabrics,
medicines and foods.

Of course, this is a familiar story
— it is the one thing about science
fiction that people who know noth-
ing about science fiction know — but
although it is a twice-told tale, it is
a fact. Science fiction has rather
often been the first medium to call
to the attention of the lay public
some technological breakthrough
that later on has become one of the
things everybody takes as perfectly
natural.

The question is, is it all over? Or
are some of our wilder speculations
perhaps close to coming true? What
about faster-than-light travel, or time
machines, or communication with an

alien race? What about robots? What
about eternal life?

With a little luck, and a good deal
of work, it is just possible we will
have something to say on some of
these subjects in the near future, for
with this issue of Worlds of Tomor-
row we start what we intend to be
a regular series of articles and es-
says on the general theme of “The
World of Tomorrow . . . Today!”

Our finest entry is an abridgement
from a book called The Prospects
of Immortality, by R. C. W. Ettinger,
which you will find beginning on
page 54. One of the oldest and wild-
est of science-fiction predictions is
that it may at some future date be
possible to freeze and ultimately re-
vive a dead man. In precisely that
form, the prediction appeared some
thirty years ago in a story called The
Jameson Satellite, by Neil R. Jones.
In this story Professor Jameson dies
and, at his deathbed request, his
body is thrust into orbit around the
earth. At what Mr. Jones thought
to be near-absolute-zero of space (it

4 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

These preat mhids were

Ben'ianthtFrmki

Isaac Nau’ton

Vtanch Bad/n

WHAT SECRET POWER
DID THEY POSSESS?

Why were these men great?

How does anyone — man or woman — achieve
greamess? Is it not by mastery of the powers
within ourselves ?

Know the mysterious world within you ! Attune
yourself to the wisdom of the ages! Grasp the
inner power of your mind ! Learn the secrets of a
full and peaceful life !

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor . . .
Isaac Newton, discoverer of the Law of Gravita-
tion . . . Francis Bacon, philosopher and scientist
. . . like many other learned and great men and
women . . . were Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians
(NOT a religious organization) have been in
existence for cenmries. Today, headquarters of
the Rosicrucians send over seven million pieces
of mail annually to all parts of the world.

ROSICRUCIANS

San Jose (AMORC) California, U.S.A.

SEND THIS COUPON

: ;^Htefor;your FR^ E
copy pi ^^Ihe Mas-
teO’ —

TODAY. Mo ob-
A non-
ptofiki ^ organiaa-
tfon. Address :

Scfih^ Z.B.M.

Scribe Z.B.M.

The ROSICZRUCIANS
(AMORC)

San Jose, California, U.S.A.

Please send me the jree book, The Mastery cf Life,
which explains how I may learn ro use my faculties
and powers of mind.

Name

Address-

City

State

6 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
turns out not to be quite as cold as
he imagined, but that’s a detail), it
remains undecayed for millions of
years, until it is found by a star-
wandering race of aliens. They re-
vive Professor Jameson and implant
his brain in a prosthetic metal body;
and there after, as Zorome Machine-
Man No. 21MM392, he roams the
galaxy endlessly . . .

That’s fantasy of course.

Of course?

Well, now read The Prospects of
Immortality and see what Mr. Etting-
er, a physical scientist and a Fellow
of the National Science Foundation,
has to say . . .

By the way, abridgement of this
one book does not mean that we in-
tend to go in for a diet of reprints.
We don’t. This book, which was pri-
vately published, with a very limited
circulation, has heretofore been
available only to something like one
American in a million. If something
as interesting, and as unlikely to have
come to your attention elsewhere,
turns up again, we may again be
tempted to reprint it. But generally
speaking our rule is, and remains.
No Reprints.

Science-fiction readers must enjoy
each other’s company; at any rate,
we see no other explanation for the
number of clubs, regional confer-
ences, conventions and other gather-
ings of the clan which seem to go
on, year in and year out, all over the
country and indeed all over the
world.

If you’ve never found the oppor-
tunity to meet a representative
sampling of other readers — not to

mention editors, writers, artists, pub-
lishers and heaven knows what-all —
your attention is invited to the follow-
ing roundup of the principal large-
scale events scheduled for the bal-
ance of this year in the United States.
(We omit the rest of the world not
out of chauvinism but because the reg-
ularly scheduled extraterritorial con-
ventions are either already over —
e.g., the English annual affair at
Eastertime — or haven’t been firmed
up as to plans, e.g. further runnings
of the conventions that have some-
times been held in Germany and in
Japan.)

To begin with is the World Conven-
tion. “World” is a slightly ambitious
term, but not totally without justifi-
cation; although nine-tenths of the
guests, at least, will usually be found
to have come from one of the fifty
states, there is generally a fair sprink-
ling from Canada, a lesser group
from Latin America and an occa-
sional visitor from Asia, Europe or
Australia. (Neither Africa nor Ant-
arctica has as yet been observed to
send a delegation.) A regular fea-
ture for nearly 25 years, the World-
Con has been held in over a dozen
cities, all but two of them in the
United States. Since the rules of the
game provide for moving the lo-
cation every year, and last year was
Chicago’s turn and the year before
Seattle’s, this year it will be held in
Washington, D.C., on the first week-
end in September. It runs three days,
during which you have a chance to
meet your favorite writers, editors,
et al, as well as listen to what they
have to say on a variety of panels
and topical speeches.

The Guest of Honor this year is

NOW THAT TOMORROW'S HERE 7

a fellow named Will F. Jenkins,
better known as Murray Leinster,
under which pseudonym he had the
distinction of writing the first origin-
al story to be published in a science-
fiction magazine in the world (in
Amazing Stories, in 1926; not in the
first issue, but those issues were made
up of reprints) . . . and he still goes
on doing it. and very well. If your
plans include being around Wash-
ington, then, and your interests ex-
tend to visiting the convention, the
way to arrange it is to write the Dis-
Con Committee, P. O. Box 36,
Mount Rainier, Maryland, for infor-
mation.

Then there are the local confer-
ences. Co.ming up almost at once is
New York City’s annual LUNA-
CON. This will be the seventh run-
ning of this event, a one-day gather-
ing of some 100 fans, writers and so
on from the Metropolitan area, fea-
turing an address by a Guest of Hon-
or (in previous years the guests have
been Willy Ley, Lester del Rey, etc.)
and a variety of panels and other
talks. The date is Sunday, April 21st,
1963; the place, Adelphi Hall, 74
Fifth Avenue, New York City; and
the proceedings begin about 1 P.M.

Two months later, a pair of events
occur on consecutive weekends, but
about two thousand miles apart:

The MIDWESCON, on June 28th
to June 30th, will be held this year
in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the North
Plaza Motel. The Midwesterners run
an informal and usually delightfully
relaxed gathering, to which they in-
vite all interested parties. This is
the fourteenth of the same; for in-
formation, you write to Donald E.

Ford, Box 19-T, RR 1, Loveland,
Ohio.

The WESTERCON takes in aU the
Pacific Coast territories of the
U.S.A., which turns out to include
an astonishing number of your fav-
orite writers, many of whom show
up each year. Kris Neville is the
Guest of Honor in this sixteenth an-
nual session, which will be held July
4th to 7th (yes, four long days!) at
the Hyatt House in Burlingame, Cal-
ifornia, near the San Francisco air-
port. For further information: Ben
Stark, 113 Ardmore Road, Berkeley
7, California.

In most years there is a DIS-
CLAVE — that’s to say, a District of
Columbia ConCLAVE — in Wash-
ington, but as this year its space is
occupied by the World Convention
on Labor Day weekend, that leaves
only:

The Philadelphia Science Fiction
Conference, the date for which is
still uncertain at this writing but will
likely turn out to be the first week-
end in November. In point of time
the Philcon is the granddaddy of
them all, since the first recorded
conference took place in that city
back in 1936. Such celebrated writ-
ers as Damon Knight, Theodore
Sturgeon, H. Beam Piper and James
Blish have been keynoters in past
years; this year the committee has
made the serious error of giving its
principal speaking assignment to the
editor of one of the science-fiction
magazines. (This one, in fact.) For
information: Tom Purdom, 1213
Spruce Street, Philadelphia 7, Penn-
sylvania.

That’s the roster. Have a good
time! FREDERIK POHL

Worlds of Tomorrow • Novelette

THE

ST ARSE NT
KNAVES

BY KEITH LAUMER

Illustrated by Gaughan

When the Great Galactic Union
first encounters Earth ... is
this what is gping to happen?

C lyde W. Snithian was a bald
eagle of a man, dark-eyed, pot-
bellied, with the large, expressive
hands of a rug merchant. Round-
shouldered in a loose cloak, he
blinked small reddish eyes at Dan
Slane’s travel-stained six foot one.

“Kelly here tells me you’ve been
demanding to see me.” He nodded
toward the florid man at his side.
He had a high, thin voice, like some-
thing that needed oiling. “Some-

thing about important information
regarding safeguarding my paint-
ings.”

“That’s right, Mr. Snithian,” Dan
said. “I believe I can be of great
help to you.”

“Help how? If you’ve got ideas
of bilking me. . .” The red eyes
bored into Dan like hot pokers.

“Nothing like that, sir. Now, I
know you have quite a system of
guards here — the papers are full
of it — ”

“Damned busybodies! Sensation-

8 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 9

10. WORLDS OF TOMORROW
mongers! If it wasn’t for the press,
I’d have no concern for my paint-
ings today!”

“Yes sir. But my point is, the one
really important spot has been left
unguarded.”

“Now, wait a minute — ” Kelly
started.

“What’s that?” Snithian cut in.

“You have a hundred and fifty
men guarding the house and grounds
day and night — ”

“Two hundred and twenty-five,”
Kelly snapped.

“ — but no one at all in the vault
with the paintings,” Slane finished.

“Of course not,” Snithian shrilled.
“Why should I post a man in the
vault? It’s under constant surveil-
lance from the corridor outside.”

“The Harriman paintings were
removed from a locked vault,” Dan
said. “There was a special seal on
the door. It wasn’t broken.”

“By the saints, he’s right,” Kelly
exclaimed. “Maybe we ought to
have a man in that vault.”

“Another idiotic scheme to waste
my money,” Snithian snapped. “I’ve
made you responsible for security
here, Kelly! Let’s have no more
nonsense. And throw this nincom-
poop out!” Snithian turned and
stalked away, his cloak flapping at
his knees.

“I’ll work cheap,” Dan called af-
ter him as Kelly took his arm. “I’m
an art lover.”

“Never mind that,” Kelly said, es-
corting Dan along the corridor. He
turned in at an office and closed
the door.

“Now, as the old buzzard said.
I’m responsible for security here. If

those pictures go, my job goes with
them. Your vault idea’s not bad.
Just how cheap would you work?”
“A hundred dollars a week,” Dan
said promptly. “Plus expenses,” he
added.

Kelly nodded. “I’ll fingerprint you
and run a fast agency check. If
you’re clean. I’ll put you on, starting
tonight. But keep it quiet.”

D an looked around at the gray
walls, with shelves stacked
to the low ceiling with wrapped
paintings. Two three-hundred-watt
bulbs shed a white glare over the
tile floor, a neat white refrigerator,
a bunk, an arm-chair, a bookshelf
and a small table set with paper
plates, plastic utensils and a port-
able radio — all hastily installed
at Kelly’s order. Dan opened the
refrigerator, looked over the stock
of salami, liverwurst, cheese and
beer. He opened a loaf of bread,
built up a well-filled sandwich,
keyed open a can of beer.

It wasn’t fancy, but it would do.
Phase one of the plan had gone off
without a hitch.

Basically, his idea was simple. Art
collections had been disappearing
from closely guarded galleries and
homes all over the world. It was
obvious that no one could enter a
locked vault, remove a stack of
large canvases and leave, unnoticed
by watchful guards — and leaving
the locks undamaged.

Yet the paintings were gone.
Someone had been in those vaults
— someone who hadn’t entered in
the usual way.

Theory failed at that point; that

left the experimental method. The
Snithian collection was the largest
west of the Mississippi. With such a
target, the thieves were bound to
show up. If Dan sat in the vault
— day and night — waiting — he
would see for himself how they op-
erated.

He finished his sandwich, went to
the shelves and pulled down one of
the brown-paper bundles. Loosening
the string binding the package, he
slid a painting into view. It was a
gaily colored view of an open-air
cafe, with a group of men and wom-
en in gay-ninetyish costumes gath-
ered at a table. He seemed to re-
member reading something about it
in a magazine. It was a cheerful
scene; Dan liked it. Still, it hardly
seemed worth all the effort. . .

He went to the wall switch and
turned off the lights. The orange
glow of the filaments died, leaving
only a faint illumination from the
night-light over the door. When the
thieves arrived, it might give him
a momentary advantage if his eyes
were adjusted to the dark. He
groped his way to the bunk.

So far, so good, he reflected,
stretching out. When they showed
up, he’d have to handle everything
just right. If he scared them off
there’d be no second chance. He
would have lost his crack at — what-
ever his discovery might mean to
him.

But he was ready. Let them come.

E ight hours, three sandwiches
and six beers later, Dan roused
suddenly from a light doze and sat
up on the cot. Between him and the

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 11
crowded shelving, a palely luminous
framework was materializing ia
mid-air.

The apparition was an open-
work cage — about the size and
shape of an out-house minus the
sheathing, Dan estimated breath-
lessly. Two figures were visible
within the structure, sitting stiffly
in contoured chairs. They glowed,
if anything, more brightly than the
framework.

A faint sound cut into the still-
ness — a descending whine. The
cage moved jerkily, settling toward
the floor. Long blue sparks jumped,
crackling, to span the closing gap;
with a grate of metal, the cage
settled against the floor. The spectral
men reached for ghostly switches. . .

The glow died.

Dan was aware of his heart
thumping painfully under his ribs.
His mouth was dry. This was the
moment he’d been planning for, but
now that it was here —

Never mind. He took a deep
breath, ran over the speeches he
had prepared for the occasion:

Greeting, visitors from the Fu-
ture. . .

Hopelessly corny. What about:
Welcome to the Twentieth Cen-
tury. . .

No good; it lacked spontaneity.
The men were rising, their backs to
Dan, stepping out of the skeletal
frame. In the dim light it now
looked like nothing more than a
rough frame built of steel pipe, with
a cluster of levers in a console be-
fore the two seats. And the thieves
looked ordinary enough: Two men
in gray coveralls, one slender and

12 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
balding, the other shorter and round-
faced. Neither of them noticed Dan,
sitting rigid on the cot. The thin
man placed a lantern on the table,
twiddled a knob. A warm light
sprang up. The visitors looked at
the stacked shelves.

“Looks like the old boy’s been
doing all right,” the shorter man
said. “Fathead’s gonna be pleased.”
“A very gratifying consignment,”
his companion said. “However, we’d
best hurry, Manny. How much time
have we left on this charge?”
“Plenty. Fifteen minutes anyway.”
The thin man opened a package,
glanced at a painting.

“Ah, magnificent. Almost the
equal of Picasso in his puce period.”
Manny shuffled through the oth-
er pictures in the stack.

“Like always,” he grumbled. “No
nood dames. I like nood dames.”
“Look at this, Manny! The tex-
tures alone — ”

Manny looked. “Yeah, nice use
of values,” he conceded. “But I still
prefer nood dames, Fiorello.”

“And this!” Fiorello lifted the next
painting. “Look at that gay play of
rich browns!”

“I seen richer browns on Thirty-
third Street,” Manny said. “They was
popular with the sparrows.”

“Manny, sometimes I think your
aspirations — ”

“Whatta ya talkin? I use a roll-
on.” Manny, turning to place a
painting in the cage, stopped dead
as he caught sight of Dan. The
painting clattered to the floor. Dan
stood, cleared his throat. “Uh. . .”
“Oh-oh,” Manny said. “A double-
cross.”

“I’ve — ah — been expecting
you gentlemen,” Dan said. “I — ”

“I told you we couldn’t trust no
guy with nine fingers on each hand,”
Manny whispered hoarsely. He
moved toward the cage. “Let’s blow,
Fiorello.”

“Wait a minute,” Dan said. “Be-
fore you do anything hasty — ”
“Don’t start nothing, Buster,”
Manny said cautiously. “We’re plen-
ty tough guys when aroused.”

“I want to talk to you,” Dan in-
sisted. “You see, these paintings — ”
“Paintings? Look, it was all a mis-
take. Like, we figured this was the
gent’s room — ”

“Never mind, Manny,” Fiorello
cut in. “It appears there’s been a
leak.”

Dan shook his head. “No leak. I
simply deduced — ”

“Look, Fiorello,” Manny said.
“You chin if you want to; I’m doing
a fast fade.”

“Don’t act hastily, Manny. You
know where you’ll end.”

“Wait a minute!” Dan shouted.
“I’d like to make a deal with you
fellows.”

“Ah-hah!” Kelly’s voice blared
from somewhere. “I knew it! Slane,
you crook!”

D an looked about wildly. The
voice seemed to be issuing
from a speaker. It appeared Kelly
hedged his bets.

“Mr. Kelly, I can explain every-
thing!” Dan called. He turned back
to Fiorello. “Listen, I figured out — ”
“Pretty clever!” Kelly’s voice
barked. “Inside job. But it takes
more than the likes of you to out-

fox an old-timer like Eddie Kelly.”

“Perhaps you were right, Manny,”
Fiorello said. “Complications are
arising. We’d best depart with aU
deliberate haste.” He edged toward
the cage.

“What about this ginzo?” Manny
jerked a thumb toward Dan. “He’s
on to us.”

“Can’t be helped.”

“Look — I want to go with you!”
Dan shouted.

“I’ll bet you do!” Kelly’s voice
roared. “One more minute and I’ll
have the door open and collar the
lot of you! Came up through a tun-
nel, did you?”

“You can’t go, my dear fellow,”
Fiorello said. “Room for two, no
more.”

Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed
up the pistol Kelly had supplied.
He aimed it at Manny. “You stay
here, Manny! I’m going with Fiorel-
io in the time machine.”

“Are you nuts?” Manny demand-
ed.

“I’m flattered, dear boy,” Fiorello
said, “but — ”

“Let’s get moving. Kelly will have
that lock open in a minute.”

“You can’t leave me here!” Manny
spluttered, watching Dan crowd in-
to the cage beside Fiorello.

“We’ll send for you,” Dan said.
“Let’s go, Fiorello.”

The balding man snatched sud-
denly for the gun. Dan wrestled
with him. The pistol fell, bounced
on the floor of the cage, skidded in-
to the far corner of the vault.
Manny charged, reaching for Dan
as he twisted aside; Fiorello’s elbow
caught him in the mouth. Manny

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 13
staggered back into the arms of
Kelly, bursting red-faced into the
vault.

“Manny!” Fiorello released his
grip on Dan, lunged to aid his com-
panion. Kelly passed Manny to one
of three cops crowding in on his
heels. Dan clung to the framework
as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A
cop pushed past them, spotted Dan,
moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan
grabbed a lever at random and
pulled.

Sudden silence fell as the walls
of the room glowed blue. A spectral
Kelly capered before the cage, fluo-
rescing in the blue-violet. Dan swal-
lowed hard and nudged a second
lever. The cage sank like an elevator
into the floor, vivid blue washing
up its sides.

Hastily he reversed the control.
Operating a time machine was tricky
business. One little slip, and the
Slane molecules would be squeez-
ing in among brick and mortar
particles. . .

But this was no time to be cau-
tious. Things hadn’t turned out just
the way he’d planned,, but after all,
this was what he’d wanted — in a
way. The time machine was his to.
command. And if he gave up now
and crawled back into the vault,
Kelly would gather him in and pin
every art theft of the past decade
on him.

It couldn’t be too hard. He’d take
it slowly, figure out the controls. . .

D an took a deep breath and
tried another lever. The cage
rose gently, in eerie silence. It
reached the ceiling and kept going.

U WORLDS OF TOMORROW
Dan gritted his teeth as an eight-
inch band of luminescence passed
down the cage. Then he was emerg-
ing into a spacious kitchen. A blue-
haloed cook waddled to a luminous
refrigerator, caught sight of Dan
rising slowly from the floor, stum-
bled back, mouth open. The cage
rose, penetrated a second ceiling.
Dan looked around at a carpeted
hall.

Cautiously he neutralized the con-
trol lever. The cage came to rest
an inch above the floor. As far as
Dan could tell, he hadn’t traveled
so much as a minute into the past
or future.

He looked over the controls.
There should be one labeled “For-
ward” and another labeled “Back”,
but all the levers were plain, un-
adorned black. They looked, Dan
decided, like ordinary circuit-break-
er type knife-switches. In fact, the
whole apparatus had the appear-
ance of something thrown together
hastily from common materials.
Still, it worked. So far he had only
found the controls for maneuvering
in the usual three dimensions, but
the time switch was bound to be
here somewhere. . .

Dan looked up at a movement
at the far end of the haU.

A girl’s head and shoulders ap-
peared, coming up a spiral staircase.
In another second she would see
him, and give the alarm — and
Dan needed a few moments of
peace and quiet in which to figure
out the controls. He moved a lever.
The cage drifted smoothly sideways,
sliced through the wall with a flurry
of vivid blue light. Dan pushed the

lever back. He was in a bedroom
now, a wide chamber with flouncy
curtains, a four-poster under a
flowered canopy, a dressing table —

The door opened and the girl
stepped into the room. She was
young. Not over eighteen, Dan
thought — as nearly as he could tell
with the blue light playing around
her face. She had long hair tied
with a ribbon, and long legs, neatly
curved. She wore shorts and carried
a tennis racquet in her left hand
and an apple in her right. Her back
to Dan and the cage, she tossed the
racquet on a table, took a bite of
the apple, and began briskly unbut-
toning her shirt.

Dan tried moving a lever. The
cage edged toward the girl. Anoth-
er; he rose gently. The girl tossed
the shirt onto a chair and undid the
zipper down the side of the shorts.
Another lever; the cage shot toward
the outer wall as the girl reached
behind her back. . .

Dan blinked at the flash of blue
and looked down. He was hovering
twenty feet above a clipped lawn.

He looked at the levers. Wasn’t
it the first one in line that moved
the cage ahead? He tried it, shot
forward ten feet. Below, a man
stepped out on the terrace, lit a
cigarette, paused, started to turn his
face up —

Dan jabbed at a lever. The cage
shot back through the wall. He was
in a plain room with a depression
in the floor, a wide window with a
planter filled with glowing blue
plants —

The door opened. Even blue, the
girl looked graceful as a deer as

she took a last bite of the apple and
stepped into the ten-foot-square
sunken tub. Dan held his breath.
The girl tossed the apple core aside,
seemed to suddenly become aware
of eyes on her, whirled —

With a sudden lurch that threw
Dan against the steel bars, the cage
shot through the wall into the open
air and hurtled off with an acclera-
tion that kept him pinned, helpless.
He groped for the controls, hauled
at a lever. There was no change.
The cage rushed on, rising higher.
In the distance, Dan saw the skyline
of a town, approaching with fright-
ful speed. A tall office building
reared up fifteen stories high. He
was headed dead for it —

He covered his ears, braced him-
self —

With an abruptness that flung
him against the opposite side of the
cage, the machine braked, shot
through the wall and slammed to a
stop. Dan sank to the floor of the
cage, breathing hard. There was a
loud click! and the glow faded.

With a lunge, Dan scrambled out
of the cage. He stood looking
around at a simple brown-painted
office, dimly lit by sunlight filtered
through elaborate Venetian blinds.
There were posters on the wall, a
potted plant by the door, a heap of
framed paintings beside it, and at
the far side of the room a desk. And
behind the desk — Something.

II

"TAan gaped at a head the size
-L' of a beachball, mounted on
a torso like a hundred-gallon bag of

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 15
water. Two large brown eyes blink-
ed at him from points eight inches
apart. Immense hands with too
many fingers unfolded and reached
to open a brown paper carton, dip
in, then toss three peanuts, deliber-
ately, one by one, into a gaping
mouth that opened just above the
brown eyes.

“Who’re you?” a bass voice de-
manded from somewhere near the
floor.

“I’m . . . I’m . . . Dan Slane . . .
your honor.”

“What happened to Manny and
Fiorello?”

“They — I — There was this cop.
Kelly—”

“Oh-oh.” The brown eyes blinked
deliberately. The many-fingered
hands closed the peanut carton and
tucked it into a drawer.

“Well, it was a sweet racket while
it lasted,” the basso voice said. “A
pity to terminate so happy an enter-
prise. Still. . .” A noise like an ampli-
fied bronx cheer issued from the
wide mouth.

“How . . . what . . .?”

“The carrier returns here auto-
matically when the charge drops be-
low a critical value,” the voice said.
“A necessary measure to discourage
big ideas on the part of wisenheim-
ers in my employ. May I ask how
you happen to be aboard the carrier,
by the way?”

“I just wanted — I mean, after I
figured out — that is, the police. . .

I went for help,” Dan finished
lamely.

“Help? Out of the picture, unfor-
tunately. One must maintain one’s
anonymity, you’ll appreciate. My

16 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
operation here Is under wraps at
present. Ah, I don’t suppose you
brought any paintings?”

Dan shook his head. He was star-
ing at the posters. His eyes, accus-
toming themselves to the gloom of
the office, could now make out the
vividly drawn outline of a creature
resembling an alligator-headed gi-
raffe rearing up above scarlet foli-
age. The next poster showed a face
similar to the beachball behind the
desk, with red circles painted
around the eyes. The next was a
view of a yellow volcano spouting
fire into a black sky.

“Too bad.” The words seemed to
come from under the desk. Dan
squinted, caught a glimpse of coiled
purplish tentacles. He gulped and
looked up to catch a brown eye up-
on him. Only one. The other seemed
to be busily at work studying the
ceiling.

“I hope,” the voice said, “that you
ain’t harboring no reactionary racial
prejudices.”

(C/^osh, no,” Dan reassured
vJ the eye. “I’m crazy about
— uh — ”

“Vorplischers,” the voice said.
“From Vorplisch, or Vega, as you
call it.” The Bronx cheer sounded
again. “How I long to glimpse once
more my native fens! Wherever
one wanders, there’s no pad like
home.”

“That reminds me,” Dan said. “I
have to be running along now.” He
sidled toward the door.

“Stick around, Dan,” the voice
rumbled. “How about a drink? 1 can
offer you Chateau Neuf du Pape,

’59, Romance Conte, ’32, goat’s
milk, Pepsi — ”

“No, thanks.”

“If you don’t mind, I believe I’ll
have a Big Orange.” The Vorplischer
swiveled to a small refrigerator, re-
moved an immense bottle fitted
with a nipple and turned back to
Dan. “Now, I got a proposition
which may be of some interest to
you. The loss of Manny and Fiorel-
lo is a serious blow, but we may
yet recoup the situation. You made
the scene at a most opportune time.
What I got in mind is, with those
two clowns out of the picture, a va-
cancy exists on my staff, which you
might well fill. How does that grab
you?”

“You mean you want me to take
over operating the time machine?”
“Time machine?” The brown eyes
blinked alternately. “I fear some
confusion exists. I don’t quite dig
the significance of the term.”

“That thing,” Dan jabbed a thumb
toward the cage. “The machine I
came here in. You want me — ”
“Time machine,” the voice re-
peated. “Some sort of chronometer,
perhaps?”

“Huh?”

“I pride myself on my command
of the local idiom, yet I confess the
implied concept snows me.” The
nine-fingered hands folded on the
desk. The beachball head leaned
forward interestedly. “Clue me,
Dan. What’s a time machine?”

“Well, it’s what you use to travel
through time.”

The brown eyes blinked in agi-
tated alternation. “Apparently I’ve
loused up my investigation of the

local cultural background. I had no
idea you were capable of that sort
of thing.” The immense head leaned
back, the wide mouth opening and
closing rapidly. “And to think I’ve
been spinning my wheels collecting
primitive 2-D art!”

“But — don’t you have a time
machine? I mean, isn’t that one?”
“That? That’s merely a carrier.
Now tell me more about your time
machines. A fascinating concept!
My superiors will be delighted at
this development — and astonished
as well. They regard this planet as
Endsville.”

Ct'^Tour superiors?” Dan eyed
1C the window; much too far
to jump. Maybe he could reach the
machine and try a getaway —

“I hope you’re not thinking of
leaving suddenly,” the beachball
said, following Dan’s glance. One
of the eighteen fingers touched a
six-inch yellow cylinder lying on the
desk. “Until the carrier is fueled.
I’m afraid it’s quite useless. But, to
put you in the picture. I’d best in-
troduce myself and explain my mis-
sion here. I’m Blote, Trader Fourth
Class, in the employ of the Vegan
Confederation. My job is to develop
new sources of novelty items for
the impulse-emporiums of the en-
tire Secondary Quadrant.”

“But the way Manny and Fiorello
came sailing in through the wall!
That has to be a time machine they
were riding in. Nothing else could
just materialize out of thin air like
that.”

“You seem to have a time-ma-
chine fixation, Dan,” Blote said.

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 17
“You shouldn't assume, just because
you people have developed time
travel, that everyone has. Now — ”
Blote’s voice sank to a bass whisper
— “I’ll make a deal with you, Dan.
You’ll secure a small time machine
in good condition for me. And in
return — ”

“I’m supposed to supply you with
a time machine?”

Blote waggled a stubby forefinger
at Dan. “I dislike pointing it out,
Dan, but you are in a rather awk-
ward position at the moment. Il-
legal entry, illegal possession of
property, trespass — then doubtless
some embarrassment exists back at
the Snithian residence. I daresay
Mr. Kelly would have a warm wel-
come for you. And, of course, I
myself would deal rather harshly
with any attempt on your part to
take a powder.” The Vegan flexed
all eighteen fingers, drummed his
tentacles under the desk, and rolled
one eye, bugging the other at Dan.

“Whereas, on the other hand,”
Blote’s bass voice went on, “you and
me got the basis of a sweet deal.
You supply the machine, and I fix
you up with an abundance of the
local medium of exchange. Equit-
able enough, I should say. What
about it, Dan?”

“Ah, let me see,” Dan temporized.
“Time machine. Time machine — ”

“Don’t attempt to weasel on me,
Dan,” Blote rumbled ominously.

“I’d better look in the phone
book,” Dan suggested.

Silently, Blote produced a dog-
eared directory. Dan opened it.

“Time, time. Let’s see. . .” He
brightened. “Time, Incorporated;

18 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

local branch office. Two twenty-one

Maple Street.”

“A sales center?” Blote inquired.
“Or a manufacturing complex?”

“Both,” Dan said. “I’ll just nip
over and — ”

“That won’t be necessary, Dan,”
Blote said. “I’ll accompany you.”
He took the directory, studied it.

“Remarkable! A common com-
modity, openly on sale, and I failed
to notice it. Still, a ripe nut can
fall from a small tree as well as
from a large.” He went to his desk,
rummaged, came up with a hand-
ful of fuel cells. “Now, off to gather
in the time machine.” He took his
place in the carrier, patted the seat
beside him with a wide hand.
“Come, Dan. Get a wiggle on.”

H esitantly, Dan moved to the
carrier. The bluff was all
right up to a point — but the point
had just about been reached. He
took his seat. Blote moved a lever.
The familiar blue glow sprang up.
“Kindly direct me, Dan,” Blote de-
manded. “Two twenty-one Maple
Street, I believe you said.”

“I don’t know the town very
well,” Dan said, “but Maple’s over
that way.”

Blote worked levers. The carrier
shot out into a ghostly afternoon
sky. Faint outlines of buildings, like
faded negatives, spread below. Dan
looked around, spotted lettering on
a square five-story structure.

“Over there,” he said. Blote di-
rected the machine as it swooped
smoothly toward the flat roof Dan
indicated.

“Better let me take over now,”

Dan suggested. “I want to be sure j
to get us to the right place.”

“Very well, Dan.” ,

Dan dropped the carrier through j
the roof, passed down through a
dimly seen office. Blote twiddled a .
small knob. The scene around the ,
cage grew even fainter. “Best we
remain unnoticed,” he explained.

The cage descended steadily. Dan
peered out, searching for identify-
ing landmarks. He leveled off at the
second floor, cruised along a barely ,
visible corridor. Blote’s eyes rolled,
studying the small chambers along
both sides of the passage at once.

“Ah, this must be the assembly
area,” he exclaimed. “1 see the ma-
chines employ a bar-type construc-
tion, not unlike our carriers.”

“That’s right,” Dan said, staring
through the haziness. “This is where
they do time. . .” He tugged at a
lever suddenly; the machine veered
left, flickered through a barred
door, came to a halt. Two nebulous
figures loomed beside the cage. Dan
cut the switch. If he’d guessed
wrong —

The scene fluoresced, sparks
crackling, then popped into sharp
focus. Blote scrambled out, brown
eyes swivelling to take in the con-
crete walls, the barred door and —
“You!” a hoarse voice bellowed.
“Grab him!” someone yelled.

Blote recoiled, threshing his am-
bulatory members in a fruitless at-
tempt to regain the carrier as
Manny and Fiorello closed in. Dan
hauled at a lever. He caught a last
glimpse of three struggling, blue-lit
figures as the carrier shot away
through the cell wall.

in

D an slumped back against the
seat with a sigh. Now that
he was in the clear, he would
have to decide on his next move —
fast. There was no telling what oth-
er resources Blote might have. He
would have to hide the carrier,
then —

A low growling was coming from
somewhere, rising in pitch and vol-
ume. Dan sat up, alarmed. This was
no time for a malfunction.

The sound rose higher, into a
penetrating wail. There was no sign
of mechanical trouble. The carrier
glided on, swooping now over a
nebulous landscape of trees and
houses. Dan covered his ears again
the deafening shriek, like all the
police sirens in town blaring at
once. If the carrier stopped it would
be a long fall from here. Dan
worked the controls, dropping to-
ward the distant earth.

The noise seemed to lessen, de-
scending the scale. Dan slowed,
brought the carrier in to the comer
of a wide park. He dropped the last
few inches and cut the switch.

As the glow died, the siren faded
into silence.

Dan stepped from the carrier
and looked around. Whatever the
noise was, it hadn’t attracted any
attention from the scattered pedes-
trians in the park. Perhaps it was
some sort of burglar alarm. But if
so, why hadn’t it gone into action
earlier? Dan took a deep breath.
Sound or no sound, he would have
to get back into the carrier and
transfer it to a secluded spot where

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 19
he could study it at leisure. He
stepped back in, reached for the
controls —

There was a sudden chill in the
air. The bright surface of the dials
before him frosted over. There was
a loud pop! like a flashbulb explod-
ing. Dan stared from the seat at an
iridescent rectangle which hung
suspended near the carrier. Its sur-
face rippled, faded to blankness. In
a swirl of frosty air, a tall figure
dressed in a tight-fitting white uni-
form stepped through.

Dan gaped at the small rounded
head, the dark-skinned long-nosed
face, the long, muscular arms, the
hands, their backs tufted with curly
red-brown hair, the strange long-
heeled feet in soft boots. A neat
pillbox cap with a short visor was
strapped low over the deep-set yel-
lowish eyes, which turned in his di-
rection. The wide mouth opened in
a smile which showed square yel-
lowish teeth.

“Alors, monsieur,” the newcomer
said, bending his knees and back in
a quick bow. "Vous ete une indigine,
n'est ce pms?”

“No compree,” Dan choked out
“Uh . . . juh no parlay Fransay. . .”

“My error. This is the Anglic
colonial sector, isn’t it? Stupid of
me. Permit me to introduce myself.
I’m Dzhackoon, Field Agent of
Class five. Inter-dimensional Moni-
tor Service.”

“That siren,” Dan said. “Was that
you?”

Dzhackoon nodded. “For a mo-
ment, it appeared you were disin-
clined to stop. I’m glad you decided
to be reasonable.”

20 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“What outtlt did you say you
were with?” Dan asked.

“The Inter-dimensional Monitor
Service.”

“Inter-what?”

“Dimensional. The word is im-
precise, of course, but it’s the best
our language coder can do, using
the Anglic vocabulary.”

“What do you want with me?”

D zhackoon smiling reproving-
ly. “You know the penalty
for operation of an unauthorized re-
versed-phase vehicle in Interdicted
territory. I’m afraid you’ll have to
come along with me to Headquar-
ters.”

“Wait a minute! You mean you’re
arresting me?”

“That’s a harsh term, but I sup-
pose it amounts to that.”

“Look here, uh — Dzhackoon. 1
just wandered in off the street. I
don’t know anything about Inter-
dicts and reversed-whozis vehicles.
Just let me out of here.”

Dzhackoon shook his head. “I’m
afraid you’ll have to tell it to the
Inspector.” He smiled amiably, ges-
tured toward the shimmering rec-
tangle through which he had arrived.
From the edge, it was completely
invisible. It looked, Dan thought,
like a hole snipped in reality. He
glanced at Dzhackoon. If he stepped
in fast and threw a left to the head
and followed up with a right to the
short ribs —

“I’m armed, of course,” the
Agent said apologetically.

“Okay,” Dan sighed. “But Tm go-
ing under protest.”

“Don’t be nervous,” Dzhackoon

said cheerfully. “Just step through
quickly.”

Dan edged up to the glimmering
surface. He gritted his teeth, closed
his eyes and took a step. There was
a momentary sensation of searing
heat. . .

His eyes flew open. He was in a
long, narrow room with walls fin-
ished in bright green tile. Hot yellow
light flooded down from the high
ceiling. Along the wall, a series of
cubicles were arranged. Tall, white-
uniformed creatures moved briskly
about. Nearby stood a group of
short, immensely burly individuals
in yellow. Lounging against the wall
at the far end of the room. Dan
glimpsed a round-shouldered figure
in red, with great bushes of hair
fringing a bright blue face. An arm
even longer than Dzhackoon’s
wielded a toothpick on a row of
great white fangs.

“This way,” Dzhackoon said. Dan
followed him to a cubicle, curious
eyes following him. A creature in-
distinguishable from the Field Agent
except for a twist of red braid on
each wrist looked up from a desk.

“I’ve picked up that reversed-
phase violator, Ghunt,” Dzhackoon
said. “Anglic Sector, Locus C
922A4.”

Ghunt rose. “Let me see; Anglic
Sector . . . Oh, yes.” He extended a
hand. Dan took it gingerly; it was
a strange hand — hot, dry and
coarse-skinned, like a dog’s paw. He
pumped it twice and let it go.

“Wonderfully expressive,” Ghunt
said. “Empty hand, no weapon. The
implied savagery. . He eyed Dan
curiously.

“Remarkable. I’ve studied your
branch, of course, but I’ve never
had the pleasure of actually seeing
one of you chaps before. That skin;
amazing. Ah . . . may I look at your
hands?”

Dan extended a hand. The other
took it in bony fingers, studied it,
turned it over, examined the nails.
Stepping closer, he peered at Dan’s
eyes and hair.

“Would you mind opening your
mouth, please?” Dan complied.
Ghunt clucked, eyeftig the teeth. He
walked around Dan, murmuring his
wonderment.

“Uh . . . pardon my asking,” Dan
said, “but are you what — uh —
people are going to look like in the
future?”

“Eh?” The round yellowish eyes
blinked; the wide mouth curved in
a grin. “I doubt that very much, old
chap.” He chuckled. “Can’t undo
half a million years of divergent
evolution, you know.”

Cf^Tou mean you’re from the
1 past?” Dan croaked.

“The past? I’m afraid I don’t fol-
low you.”

“You don’t mean — we’re all go-
ing to die out and monkeys are go-
ing to take over?” Dan blurted.

“Monkeys? Let me see. I’ve heard
of them. Some sort of small pri-
mate, like a miniature Anthropos.
You have them at home, do you?
Fascinating!” He shook his head re-
gretfully. “I certainly wish regula-
tions allowed me to pay your sector
a visit.”

“But you are time travelers,” Dan
insisted.

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 21
“Time travelers?” Ghunt laughed
aloud.

“An exploded theory,” Dzhackoon
said. “Superstition.”

“Then how did you get to the
park from here?”

“A simple focused portal. Merely
a matter of elementary stressed-
field mechanics.”

“That doesn’t tell me much,” Dan
said. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“Explanations are in order, of
course,” Ghunt said. “Have a chair.
Now, if I remember correctly, in
your locus, there are only a few
species of Anthropos extant — ”
“Just the one,” Dzhackoon put in.
“These fellows look fragile, but oh,
brother!”

“Oh, yes; I recall. This was the
locus where the hairless variant sys-
tematically hunted down other va-
rieties.” He clucked at Dan reprov-
ingly. “Don’t you find it lonely?”
“Of course, there are a couple of
rather curious retarded forms there,”
Dzhackoon said. “Actual living fos-
sils; sub-inteUectual Anthropos.
There’s one called the gorilla, and
the chimpanzee, the orang-utan,
the gibbon — and, of course, a
whole spectrum of the miniature
forms.”

“I suppose that when the fero-
cious mutation established its supre-
macy, the others retreated to the
less competitive ecological niches
and expanded at that level,” Ghunt
mused. “Pity. I assume the gorilla
and the others are degenerate
forms?”

“Possibly.”

“Excuse me,” Dan said. “But
about that explanation. . .”

22 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“Oh, sorry. Well, to begin with
Dzhackoon and I are — ah —
Australopithecines, I believe your
term is. We’re one of the many
varieties of Anthropos native to
normal loci. The workers in yellow,
whom you may have noticed, are
akin to your extinct Neanderthals.
Then there are the Pekin deriva-
tives — the blue-faced chaps — and
the Rhodesians — "

“What are these loci you keep
talking about? And how can cave
men still be alive?”

Ghunt’s eyes wandered past Dan.
He jumped to his feet. “Ah. good
day. Inspector!” Dan turned. A
grizzled Australopithecine with a
tangle of red braid at collar and
wrists stared at him glumly.

“Harrumph!” the Inspector said.
“Albinism and alopecia. Not catch-
ing, I hope?”

“A genetic deficiency, excellen-
cy,” Dzhackoon said. “This is a
Homo Sapiens, a naturally bald
form from a rather curious locus.”
“Sapiens? Sapiens? Now, that
seems to ring a bell.” The olster
blinked at Dan. “You’re not — ” He
waggled fingers in instinctive digit-
al-mnemonic stimulus. Abruptly he
stiffened. “Why, this is one of those
fratricidal deviants!” He backed off.
“He should be under restraint,
Ghunt! Constable! Get a strong-
arm squad in here! This creature is
dangerous!”

t 4 Tnspector. I’m sure — ” Ghunt
-I started.

“That’s an order!” the Inspector
barked. He switched to an incom-
prehensible language, bellowed

more commands. Several of the
thickset Neanderthal types appear-
ed, moving in to seize Dan’s arms.
He looked around at chinless, wide-
mouthed brown faces with incon-
gruous blue eyes and lank blond
hair.

“What’s this all about?” he de-
manded. “I want a lawyer!”

“Never mind that!” the Inspector
shouted. “I know how to deal with
miscreants of your stripe!” He stare
distastefully at Dan. “Hairless!
Putty-colored! Revolting! Planning
more mayhem, are you? Preparing
to branch out into the civilized loci
to wipe out all competitive life, is
that it?”

“1 brought him here. Inspector,”
Dzhackoon put in. “It was a routine
traffic violation.”

“I’ll decide what’s routine here!
Now, Sapiens! What fiendish scheme
have you up your sleeve, eh?”

“Daniel Slane, civilian, social se-
curity number 456-7329-988,” Dan
said.

“Eh?”

“Name, rank and serial number,”
Dan explained. “I’m not answering
any other questions.”

“This means penal relocation.
Sapiens! Unlawful departure from
native locus, willful obstruction of
justice — ”

“You forgot being born without
permission, and unauthorized
breathing.”

“Insolence!” the Inspector snarled.
“I’m warning you. Sapiens, it’s in my
power to make things miserable for
you. Now, how did you induce
Agent Dzhackoon to bring you
here?”

“Well, a good fairy came and
gave me three wishes — ”

“Take him away,” the Inspector
screeched. “Sector 97; an unoccu-
pied locus.”

“Unoccupied? That seems pretty
extreme, doesn’t it?” one of the
guards commented, wrinkling his
heavily ridged brow.

“Unoccupied! If it bothers you,
perhaps I can arrange for you to
join him there!”

The Neanderthaloid guard yawn-
ed widely, showing white teeth. He
nodded to Dan, motioned him
ahead. “Don’t mind Spoghodo,” he
said loudly. “He’s getting old.”

“Sorry about all this,” a voice
hissed near Dan’s ear. Dzhackoon

— or Ghunt, he couldn’t say which

— leaned near. “I’m afraid you’ll
have to go along to the penal area,
but I’ll try to straighten things out
later.”

Back in the concourse, Dan’s
guard escorted him past cubicles
where busy IDMS agents reported
to harassed seniors, through an
archway into a room lined with nar-
row gray panels. It looked like a
gym locker room.

“Ninety-seven,” the guard said.
He went to a wall chart, studied
the fine print with the aid of a blunt,
hairy finger, then set a dial on the
wall. “Here we go,” he said. He
pushed a button beside one of the
lockers. Its surface clouded and be-
came iridescent.

“Just step through fast. Happy
landings.”

“Thanks,” Dan ducked his head
and pushed through the opening in
a puff of frost.

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 23

H e was standing on a steep
hillside, looking down across
a sweep of meadow to a plain far
below. There were clumps of trees,
and a river. In the distance a herd
of animals grazed among low shrub-
bery. No road wound along the
valley floor; no boats dotted the
river; no village nestled at its bend.
The far hills were innocent of trails,
fences, houses, the rectangles of
plowed acres. There were no con-
trails in the wide blue sky. No va-
grant aroma of exhaust fumes, no
mutter of internal combustion, no
tin cans, no pop bottles —

In short, no people.

Dan turned. The Portal still shim-
mered faintly in the bright air. He
thrust his head through, found him-
self staring into the locker room.
The yellow-clad Neanderthaloid
glanced at him.

“Say,” Dan said, ignoring the sen-
sation of a hot wire around his neck,
“can’t we talk this thing over?”
“Better get your head out of
there before it shuts down,” the
guard said cheerfully. “Otherwise —
ssskkkttt!”

“What about some reading mat-
ter? And look, I get these head
colds. Does the temperature drop
here at night? Any dangerous ani-
mals? What do I eat?”

“Here,” the guard reached into a
hopper, took out a handful of pam-
phlets. "These are supposed to be
for guys that are relocated without
prejudice. You know, poor slobs
that just happened to see too much;
but I’ll let you have one. Let’s see
. . . Anglic, Anglic. . .” He selected
one, handed it to Dan.

24 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“Thanks.”

“Better get clear.”

Dan withdrew his head. He sat
down on the grass and looked over
the booklet. It was handsomely
printed in gay colors. WELCOME
TO RELOCATION CENTER NO.
23 said the cover. Below the head-
ing was a photo of a group of sullen-
looking creatures of varying heights
and degrees of hairiness wearing
paper hats. The caption read; New-
comers Are Welcomed Into a Gay
Round of Social Activity. Hi, New-
comer!

Dan opened the book. A photo
showed a scene identical to the one
before him, except that in place of
the meadow, there was a park-like
expanse of lawn, dotted with ram-
bling buildings with long porches
lined with rockers. There were pic-
nic tables under spreading trees,
and beyond, on the river, a yacht
basin crowded with canoes and row-
boats.

“Life In a Community Center is
Grand Fun!” Dan read. “Activities!
Brownies, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts,
Girl Scouts, Sea Scouts, Tree Scouts,
Cave Scouts, PTA, Shriners, Bear
Cult, Rotary, Daughters of the East-
ern Star, Mothers of the Big Ba-
nana, Dianetics — you name it! A
Group for Everyone, and Everyone
in a Group!

Classes in conversational Urdu,
Sprotch, Yiddish, Gaelic, Fundu,
etc; knot-tying, rug-hooking, leath-
er-work, Greek Dancing, finger-
painting and many, many others!

Little Theatre!

Indian Dance Pageants!

Round Table Discussions!
Town Meetings!

Dan thumbed on through the
pages of emphatic print, stopped at
a double-page spread labeled, A
Few Do’s and Don’ts.

• All of us want to make a GO
of relocation. So — let’s re-
member the Uranium Rule:
Don’t Do It! The Other Guy
May Be Bigger!

♦ Remember the Other Fellow’s
Taboos!

What to you might be merely
a wholesome picnic or mating
bee may offend others. What
some are used to doing in
groups, others consider a soli-
tary activity. Most taboos have
to do with eating, sex, elimina-
tion or gods; so remember
look before you sit down, lie
down, squat down or kneel
down!

* Ladies With Beards Please
Note:

Friend husband may be on
the crew clearing clogged
drains — so watch that shed-
ding in the lavatories, eh, girls?
And you fellas, too! Sure,
good grooming pays — but
groom each other out in the
open, okay?

* NOTE, There has been some
agitation for separate but equal
facilities. Now, honestly, folks;
is that in the spirit of Center
No. 23? Males and females will
continue to use the same johns

as always. No sexual chauvin-
ism will be tolerated.

• A Word To The Kiddies!

No brachiating will be per-
mitted in the Social Center
area. After all, a lot of the
Dads sleep up there. There arc
plenty of other trees!

* Daintiness Pays!

In these more-active-than-
ever days, Personal Effluvium
can get away from us almost
before we notice. And that
hearty scent may not be as
satisfying to others as it is to
ourselves! So remember, fellas:
watch that P. E.l (Lye soap,
eau de Cologne, flea powder
and other beauty aids available
at supply shed!)

D an tossed the book aside.

There were worse things than
solitude. It looked like a pretty nice
world — and it was all his.

The entire North American con-
tinent, all of South America, Eu-
rope, Asia, Africa — the works.
He could cut down trees, build a
hut, furnish it. There’d be hunting
— he could make a bow and ar-
rows — and the skins would do to
make clothes. He could start a little
farming, fish the streams, sun bathe
— all the things he’d never had
time to do back home. It wouldn’t
be so bad. And eventually Dzhac-
koon would arrange for his release.
It might be just the kind of vaca-
tion —

“Ah Dan, my boy!" a bass voice

THE STAR-SEHT KNAVES 25
boomed. Dan Jumped and spun
around.

Blote’s immense face blinked at
him from the Portal. There was a
large green bruise over one eye. He
wagged a finger reproachfully.

“That was a dirty trick, Dan. My
former employees were somewhat
disgruntled, I’m sorry to say. But
we’d best be off now. There’s no
time to waste.”

“How did you get here?” Dan de-
manded.

“I employed a pocket signaler to
recall my carrier — and none too
soon.” He touched his bruised eye
gingerly. “A glance at the instru-
ments showed me that you had
visited the park. I followed and ob-
served a TDMS Portal. Being of
an adventurous turn and, of course,
concerned for your welfare, I
stepped through — ”

“Why didn’t they arrest you? I
was picked up for operating the
carrier.”

“They had some such notion. A
whiff of stun gas served to discour-
age them. Now let’s hurry along be-
fore the management revives.”

“Wait a minute, Blote. I’m not
sure I want to be rescued by you
— in spite of your concern for my
welfare.”

“Rubbish, Dan! Come along.”
Blote looked around. “Frightful
place! No population! No com-
merce! No deals!”

“It has its compensations. I think
I’ll stay. You run along.”

“Abandon a colleague? Never!”

“If you’re still expecting me to
deliver a time machine, you’re out
of luck. I don’t have one.”

26 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“No? Ah, well, in a way Fm re-
lieved. Such a device would upset
accepted physical theory. Now, Dan,
you mustn’t imagine I harbor ulte-
rior motives — but I believe our
association will yet prove fruitful.”
Dan rubbed a finger across his
lower lip thoughtfully. “Look, Blote.
You need my help. Maybe you can
help me at the same time. If I come
along, I want it understood that we
work together. I have an idea — ”
“But of course, Dan! Now shake
a leg!”

Dan sighed and stepped through
the portal. The yellow-clad guard
lay on the floor, snoring. Blote led
the way back into the great hall.
TDMS officials were scattered
across the floor, slumped over
desks, or lying limp in chairs. Blote
stopped before one of a row of
shimmering portals.

“After you, Dan.”

“Are you sure this is the right
one?”

“Quite.”

Dan stepped through in the now
familiar chill and found himself back
in the park. A small dog sniffing
at the carrier caught sight of Blote,
lowered his leg and fled.

“I want to pay Mr. Snithian a
visit,” Dan said, climbing into a seat.

“My idea exactly,” Blote agreed,
lowering his bulk into place.

“Don’t get the idea I’m going to
help "pu steal anything.”

“Dan! A most unkind remark. I
merely wish to look into certain
matters.”

“Just so you don’t start looking
into the safe.”

Blote tsked, moved a lever. The

carrier climbed over a row of blue
trees and headed west.

IV

B lote brought the carrier in
high over the Snithian Estate,
dropped lower and descended gent-
ly through the roof. The pale,
spectral servants moving about their
duties in the upper hall failed to
notice the wraith-like cage passing
soundlessly among them.

In the dining room, Dan caught
sight of the girl — Snithian’s daugh-
ter, perhaps — arranging shadowy
flowers on a sideboard.

“Let me take it,” Dan whispered.
Blote nodded. Dan steered for the
kitchen, guided the carrier to the
spot on which he had first emerged
from the vault, then edged down
through the floor. He brought the
carrier to rest and neutralized all
switches in a shower of sparks and
blue light.

The vault door stood open. There
were pictures stacked on the bunk
now, against the wall, on the floor,
Dan stepped from the carrier, went
to the nearest heap of paintings.
They had been dumped hastily, it
seemed. They weren’t even wrapped.
He examined the topmost canvas,
still in a heavy frame; as though,
he reflected, it had just been re-
moved from a gallery wall —
“Let’s look around for Snithian,”
Dan said. “I want to talk to him.”
“I suggest we investigate the up-
per floors, Dan. Doubtless his per-
sonal pad is there.”

“You use the carrier; I’ll go up
and look the house over.”

“As you wish, Dan.” Blote and
the carrier flickered and faded from
view.

Dan stooped, picked up the pistol
he had dropped in the scuffle with
Fiorello and stepped out into the
hall. All was silent. He climbed
stairs, looked into rooms. The house
seemed deserted. On the third floor
he went along a corridor, checking
each room. The last room on the
west side was fitted as a study.
There was a stack of paintings on a
table near the door. Dan went to
them, examined the top one.

It looked familiar. Wasn’t it one
that Look said was in the Art In-
stitute at Chicago?

There was a creak as of an un-
oiled hinge. Dan spun around. A
door stood open at the far side of
the room — a connecting door to
a bedroom, prooably.

“Keep well away from the carrier,
Mr. Slane,” a high thin voice said
from the shadows. The tall, cloaked
figure of W. Clyde Snithian stepped
into view, a needle-barreled pistol in
his hand.

“I thought you’d be back,” he
piped. “It makes my problem much
simpler. If you hadn’t appeared
soon, it would have been necessary
for me to shift the scene of my op-
erations. That would have been a
' nuisance.”

I

D an eyed the gun. “There are
a lot more paintings down-
stairs than there were when I left,”
he said. “I don’t know much about
art, but I recognize a few of them.
“Copies,” Snithian snapped.

“This is no copy,” Dan tapped the

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 27
top painting on tho stack. “It’s an
original. You can feel the brush-
work.”

“Not prints, of course. Copies.”
Snithian whinnied. “Exact copies.”
“These paintings are stolen, Mr.
Snithian. Why would a wealthy man
like you take to stealing art?”

“I’m not here to answer questions,
Mr. Slane!” The weapon in Snith-
ian’s hand bugged. A wave of pain
swept over Dan. Snithian cackled,
lowering the gun. “You’ll soon learn
better manners.

Dan’s hand went to his pocket,
came out holding the automatic. He
aimed it at Snithian’s face. The in-
dustrialist froze, eyes on Dan’s gun.

“Drop the gun.” Snithian’s weap-
on clattered to the floor. “Now let’s
go and find Kelly.”

“Wait!” Snithian shrilled. “I can
make you a rich man, Slane.”
“Not by stealing paintings.”

“You don’t understand. This is
more than petty larceny!”

“That’s right. It’s grand larceny.
These pictures are worth thou-
sands.”

“I can show you things that will
completely change your attitude.
Actually, I’ve acted throughout in
the best interests of humanity!”

Dan gestured with the gun.
“Don’t plan anything clever. I’m
not used to guns. This thing will go
off at the least excuse, and then
I’d have a murder to explain.”
“That would be an inexcusable
blunder on your part!” Snithian
keened. “I’m a very important fig-
ure, Slane.” He crossed the deep-
pile rug to a glass-doored cabinet.
“This,” he said, taking out a flat

28 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
black box, “eontains a fortune in
precious stones.” He lifted the lid.
Dan stepped closer. A row of bril-
liant red gems nestled in a bed of
cotton.

“Rubies?”

“Flawless — and perfectly match-
ed.” Snithian whinnied. “Perfectly
matched. Worth a fortune. They’re
yours, if you cooperate.”

“You said you were going to
change my attitude. Better get
started.”

CtT isten to me, Slane. I’m
i— >not operating independently.
I’m employed by the Ivroy, whose
power is incalculable. My assign-
ment has been to rescue from de-
struction irreplacable works of art
fated to be consumed in atomic
fire.”

“What do you mean — fated?”
“The Ivroy knows these things.
These paintings — all your art —
are unique in the galaxy. Others ad-
mire but they cannot emulate. In
the cosmos of the far future, the
few surviving treasures of dawn art
will be valued beyond all other
wealth. They alone will give a re-
newed glimpse of the universe as
it appeared to the eves of your
strange race in its glory.”

“My strange race?”

Snithian drew himself up. “I am
not of your race.” He threw his
cloak aside and straightened.

Dan gaped as Snithian’s body un-
folded. rising up, long, three-jointed
arms flexing, stretching out. The
bald head ducked now under the
beamed ceiling. Snithian chuckled
shrilly.

“What about that inflexible at-
titude of yours, now, Mr. Slane?”
he piped. “Have I made my point?”
“Yes, but — ” Dan squeaked. He
cleared his throat and tried again.
“But I’ve still got the gun.”

“Oh, that.” An eight-foot arm
snaked out, flicked the gun aside.
“I’ve only temporized with you be-
cause you can be useful to me, Mr.
Slane. I dislike running about, and
I therefore employ locals to do my
running for me. Accept my offer
of employment, and you’ll be richly
rewarded.”

“Why me?”

“You already know of my pres-
ence here. If I can enlist your loy-
alty, there will be no need to dis-
pose of you, with the attendant an-
noyance from police, relatives and
busybodies. I’d like you to act as
my agent in the collection of the
works.”

“Nuts to you!” Dan said. “I’m not
helping any bunch of skinheads
commit robbery.”

“This is for the Ivroy, you fool!”
Snithian said. “The mightiest pow-
er in the cosmos!”

“This Ivroy doesn’t sound so hot
to me — robbing art galleries — ”
“To be adult is to be disillusioned.
Only realities count. But no matter.
The question remains: Will you
serve me loyally?”

“Hell, no!” Dan snapped.

“Too bad. I see you mean what
you say. It’s to be expected, I sup-
pose. Even an infant fire-cat has
fangs.”

“You’re damn right I mean it.
How did you get Manny and Fio-
rello on your payroll? I’m surprised

even a couple of bums would go to
work for a scavenger like you.”

“I suppose you refer to the pre-
cious pair recruited by Blote. That
was a mistake, I fear. It seemed
perfectly reasonable at the time.
Tell me, how did you- overcome the
Vegan? They’re a very capable
race, generally speaking.”

“You and he work together, eh?”
Dan said. “That makes things a
little clearer. This is the collection
station and Blote is the fence.”
“Enough of your conjectures.
You leave me no choice but to dis-
pose of you. It’s a nuisance, but it
can’t be helped. I’m afraid I’ll have
to ask you to accompany me down
to the vault.”

Dan eyed the door; if he were
going to make a break, now was
the time —

T he whine of the carrier sounded.

The ghostly cage glided through
the wall and settled gently between
Dan and Snithian. The glow died.

Blote waved cheerfully to Dan
as he eased his grotesque bulk from
the seat.

“Good day to you, Snithian,”
Blote boomed. “I see you’ve met
Dan. An enterprising fellow.”
“What brings you here, Gom
Blote?” Snithian shrilled. “I thought
you’d be well on your way to Vor-
plisch by now.”

“I was tempted, Snithian. But I
don’t spook easy. There is the mat-
ter of some unfinished business.”
“Excellent!” Snithian exclaimed.
‘I’ll have another consignment
ready for you by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! How is it possible.

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 29
with Manny and Fiorello lodged in
the hosegow?” Blote looked around;
his eye fell on the stacked paint-
ings. He moved across to them,
lifted one, glanced at the next, then
shuffled rapidly through the stack.
He turned.

“What duplicity is this, Snithian!”
he rumbled. “All identical! Our
agreement called for limited edi-
tions, not mass production! My
principals will be furious! My re-
putation — ”

“Shrivel your reputation!” Snith-
ian keened. “I have more serious
problems at the moment! My en-
tire position’s been compromised.
I’m faced with the necessity for
disposing of this blundering fool!”
“Dan? Why, I’m afraid I can’t
allow that, Snithian.” Blote moved
to the carrier, dumped an armful
of duplicate paintings in the cage.
“Evidence,” he said. “The confede-
ration has methods for dealing with
sharp practice. Come, Dan, if
you’re ready. . .”

“You dare to cross me?” Snithian
hissed. “I, who act for the Ivroy?”
Blote motioned to the carrier.
“Get in, Dan. We’ll be going now.”
He rolled both eyes to bear on
Snithian. “And I’ll deal with you
later,” he rumbled. “No one pulls a
fast one on Gom Blote, Trader
Fourth Class — or on the Vegan
Federation.”

Snithian moved suddenly, flick-
ing out a spidery arm to seize the
weapon he had dropped, aim and
trigger. Dan, in a wash of pain,
felt his knees fold. He fell slackly
to the floor. Beside him, Blote
sagged, his tentacles limp.

30 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“I credited you with more intel-
ligence,” Snithian cackled. “Now I
have an extra ton of protoplasm to
dispose of. The carrier will be use-
ful in that connection.”

V

D an felt a familiar chill in the
air. A Portal appeared. In a
puff of icy mist, a taU figure
stepped through.

Gone was the tight uniform. In
its place, the lanky Australopithe-
cine wore skin-tight blue-jeans and
a loose sweat shirt. An oversized
beret clung to the small round head.
Immense dark glasses covered the
yellowish eyes, and sandals flapped
on the bare, long-toed feet. Dzhac-
koon waved a long cigarette holder
at the group.

“Ah, a stroke of luck! How nice
to find you standing by. I had ex-
pected to have to conduct an inten-
sive search within the locus. Thus
the native dress. However — ” Dzhac-
koon’s eyes fell on Snithian stand-
ing stiffly by, the gun out of sight.

“You’re of a race unfamiliar to
me,” he said. “Still, I assume you’re
aware of the Interdict on all Anthro-
poid populated loci?”

“And who might you be?” Snith-
ian inquired loftily.

“I’m a Field Agent of the Inter-
dimensional Monitor Service.”

“Ah, yes. Well, your Interdict
means nothing to me. I’m operating
directly under Ivroy auspices.”
Snithian touched a glittering pin on
his drab cloak.

Dzhackoon sighed. “There goes
the old arrest record.”

“He’s a crook!” Dan cut in. “He’s
been robbing art galleries!”

“Keep calm, Dan,” Blote mur-
mured. “no need to be overly ex-
plicit.”

The Agent turned to look the
Trader over.

“Vegan, aren’t you? I imagine |
you’re the fellow I’ve been chas- '
ing.”

“Who, me?” the bass voice rum-
bled. “Look, officer. I’m a home-
loving family man, just passing
through. As a matter of fact — ”
The uniformed creature nodded
toward the paintings in the carrier. I
“Gathered a few souvenirs, I see.”
“For the wives and kiddy. Just a
little something to brighten up the I
hive.” '

“The penalty for exploitation of ’
a sub-cultural anthropoid-occupied
body is stasis for a period not to ^
exceed one reproductive cycle. If
I recall my Vegan biology, that’s
quite a period.”

“Why, officer! Surely you’re not
putting the arm on a respectable
law-abiding being like me? Why, 1
lost a tentacle fighting in defense
of peace — ” As he talked, Blote
moved toward the carrier.

“ — your name, my dear fellow,”
he went on. “I’ll mention it to the
Commissioner, a very close friend
of mine.” Abruptly the Vegan
reached for a lever —

The long arms in the tight white
jacket reached to haul him back
effortlessly. “That was unwise, sir.
Now I’ll be forced to recommend
subliminal reorientation during
stasis.” He clamped stout handcuffs
on Blote’s broad wrists.

“You Vegans,” he said, dusting
his hands briskly. “Will you never
learn?”

iC'NTow, officer,” Blote said,
“You’re acting hastily. Ac-
tually, I’m working in the interest
of this little world, as my associate
Dan will gladly confirm. I have in-
formation which will be of consid-
erable interest to you. Snithian has
stated that he is in the employ of
the Ivroy — ”

“If the Ivroy’s so powerful, why
was it necessary to hire Snithian
to steal pictures?” Dan interrupted.

“Perish the thought, Dan. Snith-
ian’s assignment was merely to
duplicate works of art and trans-
mit them to the Ivroy.”

“Here,” Snithian cut in. “Restrain
that obscene mouth!”

Dzhackoon raised a hand. “Kind-
ly remain silent, sir. Permit my
prisoners their little chat.”

“You may release them to my
custody,” Snithian snapped.

Dzhackoon shook his head.
“Hardly, sir. A most improper sug-
gestion — even from an agent of
the Ivroy.” He nodded at Dan.
“You may continue.”

“How do you duplicate works of
art?” Dan demanded.

“With a matter duplicator. But,
as I was saying, Snithian saw an
opportunity to make extra profits
by retaining the works for repeated
duplications and sale to other cus-
tomers — such as myself.”

“You mean there are other —
customers — around?”

“I have dozens of competitors,
Dan, all busy exporting your arti-

32 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
facts. You are an industrious and
talented race, you know.”

“What do they buy?”

“A little of everything, Dan. It’s
had an influence on your designs
aJready, I’m sorry to say. The work
is losing its native purity.”

Dan nodded. “I have had the
feeling some of this modern furni-
ture was designed for Martians.”
“Ganymedans, mostly. The Mar-
tians are graphic arts fans, while
your automobiles are designed for
the Plutonian trade. They have a
baroque sense of humor.”

“What will the Ivroy do when he
finds out Snithian’s been double-
crossing him?”

“He’ll think of something, I dare-
say. I blame myself for his defec-
tion, in a way. You see, it was my
carrier which made it possible for
Snithian to carry out his thefts.
Originally, he would simply enter
a gallery, inconspicuously scan a pic-
ture, return home and process the
recording through the duplicator.
The carrier gave him the idea of re-
moving works en masse, duplicat-
ing them and returning them the
next day. Alas, I agreed to join
forces with him. He grew greedy.
He retained the paintings here and
proceeded to produce vast numbers
of copies — which he doubtless
sold to my competitors, the crook!”
Dzhackoon had whipped out a
notebook and was jotting rapidly.

“Now, let’s have those names
and addresses,” he said. “This will
be the biggest round-up in TDMS
history.”

“And the pinch will be yours,
dear sir,” Blote said. “I foresee early

promotion for you.” He held out
his shackled wrists. “Would you
mind?”

“Well . . . ’’Dzhackoon unlocked
the cuffs. “1 think I’m on firm
ground. Just don’t mention it to
Inspector Spoghodo.”

“You can’t do that!” Snithian
snapped. “These persons are dan- |
gerous!”

“That is my decision. Now — ”
Snithian brought out the pistol
with a sudden movement. “I’ll brook
no interference from meddlers — ”

T here was a sound from the
door. All heads turned. The
girl Dan had seen in the house stood
in the doorway, glancing calmly
from Snithian to Blote to Dzhac-
koon. When her eyes met Dan’s she !
smiled. Dan thought he had never !
seen such a beautiful face — and
the figure matched.

“Get out, you fool!” Snithian
snapped. “No; come inside, and
shut the door.”

“Leave the girl out of this, Snith-
ian,” Dan croaked.

“Now I’ll have to destroy all of
you,” Snithian keened. “You first of
all, ugly native!” He aimed the
gun at Dan.

“Put the gun down, Mr. Snith-
ian,” the girl said in a warm, melo-
dious voice. She seemed completely
unworried by the grotesque aliens,
Dan noted abstractedly.

Snithian swiveled on her. “You
dare — !”

“Oh, yes, I dare, Snithian.” Her
voice had a firm ring now. Snithian
stared at her. “Who ... are you. . .?”

“I am the Ivroy.”

Snithian wilted. The gun fell to
the floor. His fantastically tall fig-
ure drooped, his face suddenly
gray.

“Return to your home, Snithian,”
the girl said sadly. “I will deal with
you later.”

“But . . . but. . His voice was
a thin squeak.

“Did you think you could con-
ceal your betrayal from the Ivroy?”
she said softly.

Snithian turned and blundered
from the room, ducking under the
low door. The Ivroy turned to
Dzhackoon.

“You and your Service are to be
commended,” she said. “I leave the
apprehension of the culprits to
you.” She nodded at Blote. “I will
rely on you to assist in the task —
and to limit your operations there-
after to non-interdicted areas.”

“But of course, your worship.
You have my word as a Vegan. Do
visit me on Vorplisch some day. I’d
love the wives and kiddy to meet
you.” He blinked rapidly. “So long,
Dan. It’s been crazy cool.”

Dzhackoon and Blote stepped
through the Portal. It shimmered
and winked out. The Ivroy faced
Dan. He swallowed hard, watching
the play of light in the shoulder-
length hair, golden, fine as spun
glass. . .

“Your name is Dan?”

“Dan Slane,” he said. He took a
deep breath. “Are you really the
Ivroy?”

“I am of the Ivroy, who aw
many and one.”

“But you look like — just a beau-
tiful girl.”

THE STAR-SENT KNAVES 33

T he Ivroy smiled. Her teeth
were as even as matched
pearls, Dan thought, and as white
as —

*T am a girl, Dan. We are cousins,
you and I — separated by the long
mystery of time.”

“Blote — and Dzhackoon and
Snithian, too — seemed to think
the Ivroy ran the Universe. But — ”
The Ivroy put her hand on Dan’s.
It was as soft as a flower petal.

“Don’t trouble yourself over this
just now, Dan. Would you like to
become my agent? I need a trust-
worthy friend to help me in my
work here.”

“Doing what?” Dan heard him-
self say.

“Watching over the race which
will one day become the Ivroy.”

“I don’t understand all this —
but I’m willing to try.”

“There will be much to learn,
Dan. The full use of the mind, con-
trol of aging and disease. . . Our
work will require many centuries.”
“Centuries? But — ”

“I’ll teach you, Dan.”

“It sounds great,” Dan said. “Too
good to be true. But how do you
know I’m the man for the job?
Don’t I have to take some kind of
test?”

She looked up at him, smiling,
her lips slightly parted. On impulse,
Dan put a hand under her chin,
drew her face close and kissed her
on the mouth. . .

A full minute later, the Ivroy,
nestled in Dan’s arms, looked up
at him again.

“You passed the test,” she said.

END

Worlds of Tomorrow • Short Story

THE END OF
THE SEARCH

BY DAMON KNIGHT

He had searched for endless
years for the most valuable
collector’s item of all . . .

D reams and memories mingled in-
extricably in Firefoal’s mind
now, so that the object of his search
was not always the same. . . Some-
times, with peneray scanner and keen
listening devices, he stalked the last
specimen of hidden twitterer, that
saucer-eyed mouselike creature
spawned from a mutated ovum
twenty million years after the last
acre of raw earth had been covered
over and sealed away, while life
went on in the steel honeycomb
above it. . . Sometimes, with atavis-
tic hair sprouting like fungus from
his weathermarked face, he hunted
34 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

the dodo, or the okapi, or searched
for the secret nesting grounds of the
passenger pigeon. But always he
knew these fantasies for what they
were, so that he hunted not for
specimens so much as for Meaning.
He sought the reality behind the
symbol.

Sometimes the search would be
interrupted by long, brilliantly il-
lumined scenes of seeming irrele-
vance. Firefoal bore them patiently,
waiting for the slow tilt of blue into '
gray that heralded a change in the
dream. j

Once he stood, a child before the

silent effigy of a great, proud crea-
ture that posed with head lifted and
nostrils widening to a vanished
breeze. Satiny brown it was of coat,
and jet of mane and tail, and in its
huge eyes were distances and open
space such as he had never seen.
His father, a vague figure in a long
robe, moved his hand across a spot
of light that glowed on the wall. In-
stantly the great animal vanished,
and a parched white skeleton stood
in its place. He screamed then and
would not be comforted, though his
father made the animal appear
again. He knew that he would nev-
er pass his fingers over those deli-
cate nostrils or mount that wide
back, for the animal was dead. And
it was the last.

But that was when he was a child,
and before he understood that he
had been born into the world for
only one thing. He studied the sci-
ences, and one day he knew, as his
father had known, that they were
all imperfections, all blunted in-
struments, leading finally to the one
science that capped all.

Geology changed the faces of
continents, before man rendered
them forever changeless.

Medicine wiped out many spe-
cies inimical to man.

Metallurgy forged weapons.
Chemistry and physics armed them.

Comparative biology explained
the beginning and the end.

Natural history, the oldest of all,
replaced them all when they had
done their work and faded. At the
very apex of human endeavor, it
explained all, justified all, fulfilled
all.

THE END OF THE SEARCH 35

H e was fifteen, sitting before a
screen from which gazed the
deep-sunken eyes of a man long dead.
He took no notes, needed none, for
already his eager brain had mas-
tered the principles of total recall.
“Consider.” said the dead man’s
voice. “From the sterile beginning
life struggled outward, forms pro-
liferating upon forms, until the earth
swarmed and crawled with living
organisms of every shape and size
and color. The air was filled with
their hum and the earth rustled to
their coming and going, and the sea
silently rippled with their multi-
tudes.

“In every cubic centimeter of
dirt and in every breath of air, in
every drop of water, swam uncount-
able lives. Then, slowly, the pendu-
lum swung.

“The ant and the termite survived,
but the trilobite and the dinosaur
did not. Fewer and fewer new
forms took the place of those which
died in natural catastrophes or exter-
minated each other. And then man
was born, the great destroyer.

“For millions of years, man
killed only those life forms which
offered him competition on a gross
scale, or which supplied him with
things he needed. See, on this chart.
Now van Leeuwenhoek; Pasteur; the
competitors in the microcosm are
recognized and the battle is joined.
Now preventive medicine. Now the
electron microscope. Now the world
city begins.

“And now, for the first time, it
is realized that all other living
organisms are man’s enemies.
Where is there place for horses and

36 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
cattle, field and forests, in a totally
inhabited world.

“Now we approach the present
day. Sea water was the most ef-
ficient source of elements for con-
version. . .it is gone. The number of
species coexistent with man is three
thousand, five hundred and eight,
and of these all but approximately
nine hundred are nearing extinction.
The day is not far off when we
shall see an Earth swept clean of all
life inimical to ourselves. . .that is
to say, all life but our own. . .”

But this was a biologist who
spoke; one of the last biologists. To
Firefoal, the natural historian, all
this frantic life was not dead but
triumphantly alive. “The proper
study of mankind is Man.” Yet no
history of man was adequate to des-
cribe him except the tale of the or-
ganisms he had vanquished. Here
they were, in this great robot-tend-
ed museum which was the work of
Firefoal’s line. Not all of them, for
many upon many had vanished un-
noticed and unknown. But what man
could do, man had done. Here was
the last surviving member of nearly
every species, elephant and emu,
walrus and wapiti, dragonfly and
dog, the great and the small, pre-
served, analyzed and documented,
each in its place.

Now the half-dream shifted again,
and the tension returned. The quar-
ry still floated before him, elusive
and dim, shape melting into pro-
tean shape, and he still pursued.
How old was he now? Five hundred
years? A thousand? That question
trailed off unanswered like the oth-
ers, but he was old, he knew, and

his life-work almost done. . .almost
done.

T he world would not let him rest.

He pressed on, though his
heart thudded painfully and his
breath was a knife in his breast.
Again and again he glanced at the
creature he followed, and each
time it melted, a phantom of a
memory. He was no closer to his
goal; and time was short.

The pain caught him in a maze
of color then and he fought it,
struggling upward like a drowning
man, till the dream shapes faded
and the dream colors dimmed.
Gently a pale light floated down
upon him, and in it he saw an army
of his victims, rank upon rank,
each exquisitely clear and perfect
in its cubicle. The picture strength-
ened as the pain receded and
dropped somewhere below him; and
now he saw —

Saw the empty cubicle he had
prepared before the sickness took
him, and the mechanisms waiting
beside it, and the tall robot which
bent over him.

The robot took him up in care-
ful arms, as the last of the pain
dropped away into coldness. Only
a spark now, Firefoal watched as he
was carried into the cubicle —
watched, fading, as the mechanisms
began their work. He stood there,
proudly erect, his old eyes looking
into long-ago distances, his nostrils
dilated to catch a vanished breeze.
The last specimen. The greatest. The
end and the cornerstone. Coldness
now, fading. Darkness.

Satisfaction. END

Worlds of Tomorrow • Novelette

SPACEMAN
ON A SPREE

BY MACK REYNOLDS

Illustrated by Model

What’s more important —

Man’s conquest of space,
or one spaceman’s life?

I

T hey gave him a gold watch. It
was meant to be symbolical,
of course. In the old tradition. It
was in the way of an antique, be-
ing one of the timepieces made
generations past in the Alpine area
of Eur-Asia. Its quaintness lay in
the fact that it was wound, not
electronically by power-radio, but
by the actual physical movements
of the bearer, a free swinging rotor
keeping the mainspring at a con-
stant tension.

They also had a banquet for
him, complete with speeches by

such bigwigs of the Department of
Space Exploration as Academician
Lofting Gubelin and Doctor Hans
Girard-Perregaux. There was also
somebody from the government
who spoke, but he was one of those
who were pseudo-elected and didn’t
know much about the field of
space travel nor the significance of
Seymour Pond’s retirement. Si
didn’t bother to remember his
name. He only wondered vaguely
why the cloddy had turned up at
all.

In common with recipients of
gold watches of a score of genera-
tions before him, Si Pond would
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 37

38 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
have preferred something a bit
more tangible in the way of re-
ward, such as a few shares of Vari-
able Basic to add to his portfolio.
But that, he supposed was asking
too much.

The fact of the matter was. Si
knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn’t figured he had
enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he
didn’t, given their standards. But
Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn’t
have their standards. He’d had
plenty of time to think it over. It
was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly lim-
ited crediting, than to take the two
or three more trips in hopes of
attaining a higher standard.

He’d had plenty of time to fig-
ure it out, there alone in space on
the Moon run, there on the Venus
or Mars runs. There on the long,
long haul to the Jupiter satellites,
fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness com-
pounded of claustrophobia, mono-
tony, boredom and free fall. Plenty
of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, com-
plete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a tee-
vee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long
time. Possibly somebody like Doc
Girard-Perregaux might be horri-
fied at the idea of living in a mini-
auto-apartment . . . not realizing
that to a pilot it was roomy beyond
belief compared to the conning
tower of a space craft.

No. Even as Si listened to their
speeches, accepted the watch and

made a halting little talk of his
own, he was grinning inwardly.
There wasn’t anything they could
do. He had them now. He had
enough Basic to keep him comfort-
ably, by his standards, for the rest
of his life. He was never going to
subject himself to space cafard
again. Just thinking about it, now,
set the tic to going at the side of
his mouth.

They could count down and
blast off, for all he gave a damn.

T he gold watch idea had been
that of Lofting Gubelin. which
was typical, he being in the way of
a living anachronism himself. In
fact. Academician Gubelin was
possibly the only living man on
North America who still wore
spectacles. His explanation was
that a phobia against having his
eyes touched prohibited either sur-
gery to remould his eyeballs and
cure his myopia, or contact leases.

That was only an alibi so far as
his closest associate, Hans Girard-
Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor
Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn
facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yes-
teryear, a seldom found phenom-
enon under the Ultrawelfare State.

Slumped in an autochair in the
escape room of his Floridian home.
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his
friend. He said, acidly, “Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume
you now aeknowledge that appeal-
ing to the cloddy’s patriotism, sen-
timent and desire for publie ae-
claim have miserably failed.”

40 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

Girard-Perregaux said easily, “I
wouldn’t call Seymour Pond a clod-
dy. In his position, I am afraid I
would do the same thing he has.”

“That’s nonsense, Hans. Zoroas-
ter! Either you or I would gladly
take Pond’s place were we capable
of performing the duties for which
he has been trained. There aren’t
two men on North America —
there aren’t two men in the world!
— who better realize the urgency
of continuing our delving into
space.” Gubelin snapped his fingers.
“Like that, either of us would give
our lives to prevent man from
completely abandoning the road to
his destiny.”

His friend said drily, “Either of
us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago. Lofting.
We didn’t.”

“At that time there wasn’t such
a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering
Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole
program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men will-
ing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the
stimulus of danger in the manner
our ancestors did?”

Girard-Perregaux grunted his
sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced
tea and tequila. He said, “Never-
theless, botlt you and I conform
with the present generation in find-
ing it far more pleasant to follow
one’s way of life in the comfort of
one’s home than to be confronted
with the unpleasantness of facing
nature’s dangers in more adven-
turous pastimes.”

Gubelin, half angry at his friend’s
argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging
a finger at him negatively. “Face
reality. Lofting. Don’t require or
expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an
average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaran-
teed his fundamental womb-to-
tomb security by being issued that
minimum number of Basic shares in
our society that allows him an in-
come sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and
education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were
against his ever being drafted into
industry. Automation being what it
is, only a fraction of the popula-
tion is ever called up. But Pond
was. His industrial aptitude dossier
revealed him a possible candidate
for space pilot, and it was you
5’ourself who talked him into tak-
ing the training . . . pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages
such as complete retirement after
but six trips, added shares of Basic
so that he could enjoy a more com-
fortable life than most and the
fame that would accrue to him as
one of the very few who still par-
ticipate in travel to the planets.
Very well. He was sold. Took his
training, which, of course, required
long years of drudgery to him.
Then, performing his duties quite
competently, he made his six trips.
He is now legally eligible for re-
tirement. He was drafted into the
working force reserves, served his
time, and is now free from toil for
the balance of his life. Why should

he listen to our pleas for a few
more trips?”

“But has he no spirit of adven-
ture? Has he no feeling for. .

G irard-Perregaux was wagging his
finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had
an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated
with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.

He said, “No, he hasn’t. Few
there are who have, nowadays.
Man has always paid lip service to
adventure, hardships and excite-
ment, but in actuality his instincts,
like those of any other animal, lead
him to the least dangerous path.
Today we’ve reached the point
where no one need face danger —
ever. There are few who don’t take
advantage of the fact. Including
you and me. Lofting, and including
Seymour Pond.”

His friend and colleague changed
subjects abruptly, impatiently.
“Let’s leave this blistering jabber
about Pond’s motivation and get to
the point. The man is the only
trained space pilot in the world.
It will take months, possibly more
than a year, to bring another novi-
tiate pilot to the point where he can
safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations
for our expeditions have been in-
creasingly hard to come by — even
though in our minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs,
breakthroughs which might possibly
so spark the race that a new dream
to push man out to the stars will
take hold of us. If it is admitted

STACeMAN ON A SPREE 41

that our organization has degener-
ated to the point that we haven’t
a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board,
and especially those cloddies on Ap-
propriations, will terminate the
whole Department of Space Ex-
ploration.”

“So. . .” Girard-Perregaux said
gently.

“So some way we’ve got to bring
Seymour Pond out of his retire-
ment!”

“Now we are getting to matters.”
Girard-Perregaux nodded his
agreement. Looking over the rim
of his glass, his eyes narrowed in
thought as his face took on an ex-
pression of Machiavellianism. “And
do not the ends justify the means?”

Gubelin blinked at him.

The other chuckled. “The trouble
with you. Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on
our problem. Haven’t you ever
read of the sailor and his way of
life?”

“Sailor? What in the name of the
living Zoroaster has the sailor got
to do with it?”

“You must realize, my dear Loft-
ing, that our Si Pond is nothing
more than a latter-day sailor, with
many of the problems and view-
points, tendencies and weaknesses
of the voyager of the past. Have
you never heard of the seaman who
dreamed of returning to the village
of his birth and buying a chicken
farm or some such? All the long
months at sea — and sometimes
the tramp freighters or whaling
craft would be out for years at a
stretch before returning to home

42 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
port — he would talk of his retire-
ment and his dream. And then?
Then in port, it would be one short
drink with the boys, before taking
his accumulated pay and heading
home. The one short drink would
lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, .rolled, tat-
tooed and possibly sleeping it off
in jail. So back to sea he’d have to

go.”

Gubelin grunted bitterly. “Un-
fortunately, our present-day sailor
can’t be separated from his money
quite so easily. If he could, I’d per-
sonally be willing to lure him down
some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just
to bring him back to his job again.”
He brought his wallet from his
pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. “The ultimate
means of exchange,” he grunted.
“Nobody can spend your money,
but you, yourself. Nobody can steal
it, nobody can, ah, con you out of
it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his ac-
cumulated nest egg?”

The other chuckled again. “It is
simply a matter of finding more
modern methods, my dear chap.”

n

S i Pond was a great believer
in the institution of the spree.
Any excuse would do. Back when
he had finished basic education at
the age of twenty-five and was reg-
istered for the labor draft, there
hadn’t been a chance in a hundred
that he’d have the bad luck to have

his name pulled. But when it had
been. Si had celebrated.

When he had been informed that
his physical and mental qualifica-
tions were such that he was eligible
for the most dangerous occupation
in the Ultrawelfare State and had
been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated
once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and
only he and Rod Cameroon had
passed the finals. On this occasion,
he and Rod had celebrated togeth-
er. It had been quite a party. Two
weeks later. Rod had burned on a
faulty take-off on what should
have been a routine Moon run.

Each time Si returned from one
of his own runs, he celebrated. A
spree, a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a
night on the town. A commemora-
tion of dangers met and passed.

Now it was all over. At the age
of thirty he was retired. Law pre-
vented him from ever being called
up for contributing to the country’s
labor needs again. And he most
certainly wasn’t going to volunteer.

He had taken his schooling much
as had his contemporaries. There
wasn’t any particular reason for
trying to excell. You didn’t want to
get the reputation for being a wise
guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of
the fellas. You could do the same
in life whether you really studied
or not. You had your Inalienable
Basic stock, didn’t you? What else
did you need?

It had come as a surprise when
he’d been drafted for the labor
force.

In the early days of the Ultra-

welfare State, they had made a
mistake in adapting to the automa-
tion of the second industrial revo-
lution. They had attempted to give
everyone work by reducing the
number of working hours in the
day, and the number of working
days in the week. It finally became
ludicrous when employees of in-
dustry were working but two days
a week, two hours a day. In fact,
it got chaotic. It became obvious
that it was more practical to have
one worker putting in thirty-five
hours a week and getting to know
his job well, than it was to have a
score of employees, each working
a few hours a week and none of
them ever really becoming efficient.

The only fair thing was to let the
technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable
Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the
few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day,
a reasonable number of weeks a
year and a reasonable number of
years in a life time. When new em-
ployees were needed, a draft lot-
tery was held.

All persons registered in the la-
bor force participated. If you were
drawn, you must need serve. The
dissatisfaction those chosen might
feel at their poor luck was offset
by the fact that they were granted
additional Variable Basic shares,
according to the tasks they fulfilled.
Such shares could be added to their
portfolios, the dividends becoming
part of their current credit balance,
or could be sold for a lump sum
on the market.

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 43

Yes, but now it was all over. He
had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the
amount of shares of Basic that
most of his fellow citizens could
boast. Si Pond had it made. A
spree was obviously called for.

He was going to do this one
right. This was the big one. He’d
accumulated a lot of dollars these
past few months and he intended to
blow them, or at least a sizeable
number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket,
as the expression went. However, he
wasn’t going to rush into things.
This had to be done correctly.

Too many a spree was played by
ear. You started off with a few
drinks, fell in with some second rate
mopsy and usually wound up in a
third rate groggery where you spent
just as much as though you’d been in
the classiest joint in town. Came
morning and you had nothing to show
for all the dollars that had been
spent but a rum-head.

Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it
had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sail-
or, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his
hard earned share of the voyage’s
profits in a matter of days in the
wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that
loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant
lands, returning only periodically
and usually with the salary of
lengthy, weary periods of time to be
spent hurriedly in an attempt to
achieve the pleasure and happiness
so long denied him.

44 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

Si was going to do it differently
this time.

Nothing but the best. Wine, wom-
en, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.

npo start off, he dressed with great
A care in the honorable retire-
ment-rank suit he had so recently
purchased. His space pin he at-
tached carefully to the lapel. That
was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn’t hurt you
when you went out on the town.
In the Ultrawelfare State hardly
one person in a hundred actually
ever performed anything of value
to society. The efforts of most
weren’t needed. Those few who did
contribute were awarded honors,
decorations, titles.

Attired satisfactorily. Si double-
checked to see that his credit card
was in his pocket. As an after-
thought, he went over to the auto-
apartment’s teevee-phone, flicked it
on. held the card to the screen and
said, “Balance check, please.”

In a moment, the teevee-phone’s
robot voice reported, “Ten shares
of Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares
of Variable Basic, current value,
four thousand, two hundred and
thirty-three dollars and sixty-two
cents apiece. Current cash credit,
one thousand and eighty-four dol-
lars.” The screen went dead.

One thousand and eighty-four
dollars. That was plenty. He could
safely spend as much as half of it,
if the spree got as lively as he
hoped it would. His monthly divi-
dends were due in another week or
so, and he wouldn’t have to worry

about current expenses. Yes, in-
deedy. Si Pond was as solvent as
he had ever been in his thirty
years.

He opened the small, closet-like
door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into
the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer
and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big
city.

He considered for a moment, de-
cided against the boroughs of Bal-
timore and Boston, and selected
Manhattan instead. He had the re-
sources. He might as well do it up
brown.

He dialed Manhattan and felt
the sinking sensation that presaged
his car’s dropping to tube level.
While it was being taken up by the
robot controls, being shuttled here
and there preparatory to the shot
to his destination, he dialed the ve-
hicle’s teevee-phone for information
on the hotels of the island of the
Hudson. He selected a swank hos-
telry he’d read about and seen on
the teevee casts of society and ce-
lebrity gossip reporters, and dialed
it on the car’s destination dial.

“Nothing too good for ex-Space
Pilot Si Pond,” he said aloud.

The car hesitated for a moment,
that brief hesitation before the shot,
and Si took the involuntary breath
from which only heroes could re-
frain. He sank back slowly into the
seat. Moments passed, and the di-
rection of the pressure was re-
versed.

Manhattan. The shuttling began
again, and one or two more trav-

ersing sub-shots. Finally, the dash
threw a green light and Si evened
the canopy and stepped into his
hotel room.

A voice said gently, “If the quar-
ters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten min-
utes.”

Si took his time. Not that he
really needed it. It was by far the
most swank suite he had ever seen.
One wall was a window of what-
ever size the guest might desire and
Si touched the control that dilated
it to the full. His view opened in
such wise that he could see both
the Empire State Building Museum
and the Hudson. Beyond the river
stretched the all but endless city
which was Greater Metropolis.

He didn’t take the time to flick
on the menu, next to the auto-din-
ing table, nor to check the endless
potables on the auto-bar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative.
Besides, he didn’t plan to dine or
do much drinking in his suite. He
made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine
companionship, that was.

He looked briefly into the swim-
ming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It
wasn’t up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed
the thing to the ultimate in that di-
rection so that with a laugh he sank
almost out of sight into the mat-
tress.

He came back to his feet, gave
his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit
card from his pocket, put it against
the teevee-phone screen and pressed

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 45
the hotel button so that registration
could be completed.

For a moment he stood in the
center of the floor, in thought. Take
it easy. Si Pond, take it all easy,
this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries,
no eating in automated luncheter-
ias. This time, be it the only time
in his life, he was going to frolic
in the grand manner. No cloddy
was Si Pond.

He decided a drink was in order
to help him plan his strategy. A
drink at the hotel’s famous Kudos
Room where celebrities were re-
puted to be a dime a dozen.

He left the suite and stepped in-
to one of the elevators. He said,
“Kudos Room.”

The auto-elevator murmured po-
litely, “Yes, sir, the Kudos Room.”

A t the door to the famous ren-
dezvous of the swankiest set. Si
paused a moment and looked about.
He’d never been in a place like this,
either. However, he stifled his first
instinct to wonder about what this
was going to do to his current credit
balance with an inner grin and
made his way to the bar.

There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonish-
ment and said, offhand, attempting
an air of easy sophistication, “Sliv-
ovitz Sour.”

“Yes, sir.”

The drinks in the Kudos Room
might be concocted by hand, but
Si noticed they had the routine tee-
vee screens built into the bar for
payment. He put his credit card on
the screen immediately before him

46 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
when the drink came, and had to
quell his desire to dial for a balance
check, so as to be able to figure out
what the Sour had cost him.

Well, this was something like it.
This was the sort of thing he’d
dreamed about, out there in the
great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft.
He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then
swiveled slightly on his stool to take
a look at the others present.

To his disappointment, there
were no recognizable celebrities.
None that he placed, at least — top
teevee stars, top politicans of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports per-
sonalities.

He turned back to his drink and
noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down
from him. Si Pond blinked. He
blinked and then swallowed.

“Zo-ro-aster," he breathed.

She was done in the latest style
from Shanghai, even to the point
of having cosmetically duplicated
the Mongolian fold at the corners of
her eyes. Every pore, but every
pore, was in place. She sat with the
easy grace of the Orient, so seldom
found in the West.

His stare couldn’t be ignored.

She looked at him coldly, turned
to the bartender and murmured,
“A Far Out Cooler, please, Fred-
ric.” Then deliberately added, “1
thought the Kudos Room was sup-
posed to be exclusive.”

There was nothing the bartender
could say to that, and he went
about building the drink.

Si cleared his throat. “Hey,” he

said, “how about letting this one be
on me?”

Her eyebrows, which had been
plucked and penciled to carry out
her Oriental motif, rose. “Really!”
she said, drawing it out.

The bartender said hurriedly, “1
beg your pardon, sir. .

The girl, her voice suddenly
subtly changed, said, “Why, isn’t
that a space pin?”

Si, disconcerted by the sudden re-
versal, said, “Yeah. . .sure.”

“Good Heavens, you’re a space-
man?”

“Sure.” He pointed at the lapel
pin. “You can’t wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run.”

She was obviously both taken
back and impressed. “Why,” she
said, “you’re Seymour Pond, the pi-
lot. 1 tuned in on the banquet they
gave you.”

Si, carrying his glass, moved over
to the stool next to her. “Call me
Si,” he said. “Everybody calls me
Si.”

She said, “I’m Natalie. Natalie
Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meet-
ing Seymour Pond. Just sitting
down next to him at a bar. Just
like that.”

“Si,” Si said, gratified. Holy Zoro-
aster, he’d never seen anything like
this ratified pulchritude. Maybe on
teevee, of course, one of the cur-
rent sex symbols, but never in per-
son. “Call me Si,” he said again. “I
been called Si so long, I don’t even
know who somebody’s talking to if
they say Seymour.”

“I cried when they gave you that
antique watch,” she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn’t

quite adjusted as yet to having met
him.

Si Pond was surprised. “Cried?”
he said. “Well, why? I was kind of
bored wih the whole thing. But old
Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration de-
partment, he was hot for it.”
“Academician Gubelin?” she said,
“You just call him Doc?”

Si was expansive. “Why, sure. In
the Space Department we don’t
have much time for formality. Ev-
erybody’s just Si, and Doc, and Jim.
Like that. But how come you cried?”

S he looked down into the drink
the bartender had placed be-
fore her, as though avoiding his
face. “I. . .1 suppose it was that
speech Doctor Girard-Perregaux
made. There you stood, so fine and
straight in your space-pilot uniform,
the veteran of six exploration runs
to the planets. . .”

“Well,” Si said modestly, “two of
my runs were only to the Moon.”
“. . .and he said all those things
about man’s conquest of space.
And the dream of the stars which
man has held so long. And then
the fact that you were the last of
the space pilots. The last man in
the whole world trained to pilot a
space craft. And here you were, re-
tiring.”

Si grunted. “Yeah. That’s all part
of the Doc’s scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They’re
afraid the whole department’ll be
dropped by the Appropriations
Committee on this here Economic
Planning Board. Even if they can
find some other patsy to train for

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 47
the job, it’d take maybe a year be-
fore you could even send him on a
Moon hop. So old man Gubelin,
and Girard-Perregaux too, they’re
both trying to pressure me into
more trips. Otherwise they got a
Space Exploration Department,
with all the expense and all, but
nobody to pilot their ships. It’s kind
of funny, in a way. You know what
one of those spaceships costs?”
“Funny?” she said. “Why, I don’t
think it’s funny at all.”

Si said, “Look, how about another
drink?”

Natalie Paskov said, “Oh, I’d love
to have a drink with you, Mr. . .”
“Si,” Si said. He motioned to the
bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for
two more of the same. “How come
you know so much about it? You
don’t meet many people are inter-
ested in space any more. In fact,
most people are almost contemp-
tuous, like. Think it’s kind of a big
boondoggle deal to help use up a
lot of materials and all and keep
the economy going.”

Natalie said earnestly, “Why,
I’ve been a space fan all my life.
I’ve read all about it. Have always
known the names of all the space
pilots and everything about them,
ever since I was a child. I suppose
you’d say I have the dream that
Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke
about.”

Si chuckled. “A real buff, eh?
You know, it’s kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I
got a dam sight less interested after
my first run and I found out what
space cafard was.”

48 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

She frowned. "I don’t believe 1
know much about that.”

Sitting in the Kudos Room with
the most beautiful girl to whom he
had ever talked, Si could be non-
chalant about the subject. “Old Gu-
belln keeps that angle mostly hushed
up and out of the magazine and
newspaper articles. Says there’s
enough adverse publicity about
space exploration already. But at
this stage of the game when the
whole ship’s crammed tight with
this automatic scientific apparatus
and all, there’s precious little room
in the conning tower and you’re the
only man aboard. The Doc says
later on when ships are bigger and
there’s a whole flock of people
aboard, there won’t be any such
thing as space cafard, but. . .” Of
a sudden the right side of Si Pond’s

mouth began to tic and he hurried-
ly took up his drink and knocked
it back.

He cleared his throat. “Let’s talk
about some other angle. Look, how
about something to eat, Natalie?
I’m celebrating my retirement, like.
You know, out on the town. If
you’re free. . .”

She put the tip of a finger to her
lips, looking for the moment like a
small girl rather than an ultra-so-
phisticate. “Supposedly, I have an
appointment,” she said hesitantly.

W hen the mists rolled out in the
morning — if it was still morn-
ing — it was to the tune of an in-
sistent hotel chime. Si rolled over
on his back and growled, “Zo-ro-
as-ter, cut that out. What do you
want?”

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 49

The hotel communicator said
softly, “Checking-out time, sir, is at
two o’clock.”

Si groaned. He couldn't place the
last of the evening at all. He didn’t
remember coming back to the ho-
tel. He couldn’t recall where he had
separated from, what was her name
. . .Natalie.

He vaguely recalled having some
absinthe in some fancy club she had
taken him to. What was the gag
she’d made? Absinthe makes the
heart grow fonder. And then the
club where they had the gambling
machines. And the mists had rolled
in on him. Mountains of the Moon!
but that girl could drink. He simply
wasn’t that used to the stuff. You
don’t drink in Space School and
you most certainly don’t drink
when in space. His binges had been

few and far between.

He said now, “1 don’t plan on
checking out today. Don’t bother
me.” He turned to his pillow.

The hotel communicator said
quietly, “Sorry, sir, but your credit
balance does not show sufficient to
pay your bill for another day.”

Si Pond shot up, upright in bed,
suddenly cold sober.

His eyes darted about the room,
as though he was seeing it for the
first time. His clothes, he noted,
were thrown over a chair haphaz-
ardly. He made his way to them,
his face empty, and fished about for
his credit card, finding it in a side
pocket. He wavered to the teevee-
phone and thrust the card against
the screen. He demanded, his voice
as empty as his expression, “Bal-
ance check, please.”

50 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

In less than a minute the robot-
voice told him: “Ten shares of In-
alienable Basic. Current cash credit,
forty-two dollars and thirty cents.”
The screen went dead.

He sank back into the chair
which held his clothes, paying no
attention to them. It couldn’t be
right. Only yesterday, he’d had
twelve shares of Variable Basic,
immediately convertible into more
than fifty thousand dollars, had he
so wished to convert rather than
collect dividends indefinitely. Not
only had he the twelve shares of
Variable Basic, but more than a
thousand dollars to his credit.

He banged his fist against his
mouth. Conceivably, he might have
gone through his thousand dollars.
It was possible, though hardly be-
lievable. The places he’d gone to
with that girl in the Chinese get-up
were probably the most expensive
in Greater Metropolis. But, how-
ever expensive, he couldn’t possibly
have spent fifty thousand dollars!
Not possibly.

He came to his feet again to head
for the teevee screen and demand
an audit of the past twenty-four
hours from Central Statistics. That’d
show it up. Every penny expended.
Something was crazy here. Some-
way that girl had pulled a fast one.
She didn’t seem the type. But some-
thing had happened to his twelve
shares of Variable Basic, and he
wasn’t standing for it. It was his
security, his defense against slipping
back into the ranks of the cloddies,
the poor demi-buttocked ranks of
the average man, the desperately
dull life of those who subsisted on

the bounty of the Ultrawelfaie
State and the proceeds of ten
shares of Inalienable Basic.

He dialed Statistics and placed his
card against the screen. His voice
was strained now. “An audit of all
expenditures for the past twenty-
four hours.”

Then he sat and watched.

His vacuum-tube trip to Manhat-
tan was the first item. Two dollars
and fifty cents. Next was his hotel
suite. Fifty dollars. Well, he had
known it was going to be expensive.
A Slivovitz Sour at the Kudos
Room, he found, went for three
dollars a throw, and the Far out
Coolers Natalie drank, four dol-
lars. Absinthe was worse still, go-
ing for ten dollars a drink.

He was impatient. All this didn’t
account for anything like a thou-
sand dollars, not to speak of fifty
thousand.

The audit threw an item he
didn’t understand. A one dollar
credit. And then, immediately aft-
erward, a hundred dollar credit. Si
scowled.

And then slowly reached out and
flicked the set off. For it had all
come back to him.

At first he had won. Won so that
the other players had crowded
around him, watching. Five thou-
sand, ten thousand. Natalie had
been jubilant. The others had
cheered him on. He’d bet progress-
ively higher, smaller wagers be-
coming meaningless and thousands
being involved on single bets. A
five thousand bet on odd had lost,
and then another. The kibitzers had
gone silent. When he had attempted

to place another five thousand bet,
the teevee screen robot voice had
informed him dispassionately that
his current cash credit balance was
insufficient to cover that amount.

Yes. He could remember now.
He had needed no time to decide,
had simply snapped, “Sell one share
of Variable Basic at current market
value.”

The other eleven shares had
taken the route of the first.

When it was finally all gone and
he had looked around, it was to
find that Natalie Paskov was gone
as well.

A cadamician Lofting Gubelin,
seated in his office, was being
pontifical. His old friend Hans Gir-
ard-Perregaux had enough other
things on his mind to let him get
away with it, only half following the
monologue.

“I submit,” Gubelin orated, “that
there is evolution in society. But it
is by fits and starts, and by no
means a constant thing. Whole civ-
ilizations can go dormant, so far as
progress is concerned, for millennia
at a time.”

Girard-Perregaux said mildly,
“Isn’t that an exaggeration, Loft-
ing?”

“No, by Zoroaster, it is not! Take
the Egyptians. Their greatest mon-
uments, such as the p 5 ramids, were
constructed in the earlier dynasties.
Khufu. or Cheops, built the largest
at Gizeh. He was the founder of
the 4th Dynasty, about the year
2900 B. C. Twenty-five dynasties
later, and nearly three thousand
years, there was no greatly discem-

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 51
able change in the Egyptian cul-
ture.”

Girard-Perregaux egged him on
gently. “The sole example of your
theory I can think of, offhand.”
“Not at all!” Gubelin glared. “The
Mayans are a more recent proof.
Their culture goes back to at least
500 B. C. At that time their glyph-
writing was already wide-spread
and their cities, eventually to num-
ber in the hundreds, being built. By
the time of Christ they had
reached their peak. And they re-
mained there until the coming of the
Spaniards, neither gaining nor los-
ing, in terms of evolution of so-
ciety.”

His colleague sighed. “And your
point. Lofting?”

“Isn’t it blisteringly obvious?” the
other demanded. “We’re in danger
of reaching a similar static con-
dition here and now. The Ultra-
welfare State!” He snorted indigna-
tion. “The Conformist State or the
Status Quo State, is more like it.
I tell you, Hans, all progress is be-
ing dried up. There is no will to
delve into the unknown, no burning
fever to explore the unexplored.
And this time it isn’t a matter of a
single area, such as Egypt or Yuca-
tan, but our whole world. If man
goes into intellectual coma this
time, then all the race slows down,
not merely a single element of it.”
He rose suddenly from the desk
chair he’d been occupying to pace
the room. “The race must find a
new frontier, a new ocean to cross,
a new enemy to fight.”

Girard-Perregaux raised his eye-
brows.

52 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“Don’t be a cloddy,” Gubelin
snapped. “You know what I mean.
Not a human enemy, not even an
alien intelligence. But something
against which we must pit our
every wit, our every strength, our
strongest determination. Otherwise,
we go dull, we wither on the vine.”

The other at long last chuckled.
“My dear Lofting, you wax abso-
lutely lyrical.”

Gubelin suddenly stopped his
pacing, returned to his desk and
sank back into his chair. He seemed
to add a score of years to his age,
and his face sagged. “I don’t know
why I take it out on you, Hans.
You’re as aware of the situation
as I. Man’s next frontier is space.
First the planets, and then a reach-
ing out to the stars. This is our
new frontier, our new ocean to
cross.”

His old friend was nodding. He
brought his full attention to the dis-
cussion at last. “And we’ll succeed.
Lofting. The last trip Pond made
gives us ample evidence that we can
actually colonize and exploit the
Jupiter satellites. Two more runs,
at most three, and we can release
our findings in such manner that
they’ll strike the imaginations of
every Tom, Dick and Harry like
nothing since Columbus made his
highly exaggerated reports on his
New World.”

“Two or three more runs,” Gu-
belin grunted bitterly. “You’ve
heard the rumors. Appropriations is
going to lower the boom on us. Un-
less we can get Pond back into
harness, we’re sunk. The runs will
never be made. I tell you, Hans. . .”

B ut Hans Girard-Perregaux was
wagging him to silence with a
finger. “They’ll be made. I’ve taken
steps to see friend Seymour Pond
comes dragging back to us.”

“But he hates space! The funker
probably won’t consent to come ,
within a mile of the New Albuquer-
que Spaceport for the rest of his
life, the blistering cloddy.”

A desk light flicked green, and
Girard-Perregaux raised his eye-
brows. “Exactly at the psychological :
moment. If I’m not mistaken. Loft- *
ing, that is probably our fallen
woman.”

“Our what?"

But Doctor Hans Girard-Per-
regaux had come to his feet and
personally opened the door. “Ah,
my dear,” he said affably.

Natalie Paskov, done today in
Bulgarian peasant garb, and as
faultless in appearance as she had
been in the Kudos Room, walked
briskly into the office.

“Assignment carried out,” she
said crisply.

“Indeed,” Girard-Perregaux said
approvingly. “So soon?”

Gubelin looked from one to the
other. “What in the blistering name
of Zdroaster is going on?”

His friend said. “Academician
Gubelin, may I present Operative
Natalie of Extraordinary Services In-
corporated?”

“Extraordinary Services?” Gube-
lin blurted.

“In this case,” Natalie said
smoothly, even while taking the
chair held for her by Doctor Girard-
Perregaux, “a particularly a p t
name. It was a -dirty trick.”

“But for a good cause, my dear.”

She shrugged. “So I am often told,
when sent on these far-out assign-
ments.”

Girard-Perregaux, in spite of her
words, was beaming at her. “Please
report in full,” he said, ignoring his
colleague’s obvious bewilderment.

Natalie Paskov made it brief. “I
picked up the subject in the Kudos
Room of the Greater Metropolis
Hotel, pretending to be a devotee of
the space program as an excuse. It
soon .developed that he had em-
barked upon a celebration of his
retirement. He was incredibly naive,
and allowed me to over-indulge him
in semi-narcotics as well as alcohol,
so that his defensive inhibitions
were low. I then took him to a
gambling spot where, so dull that
he hardly knew what he was doing,
he lost his expendable capital.”

Gubelin had been staring at her,
but now he blurted, “But suppose he
had won?”

She shrugged it off. “Hardly, the
way I was encouraging him to
wager. Each time he won, I urged
him to double up. It was only a
matter of time until. . .” she let the
sentence dribble away.

Girard - Perregaux rubbed his
hands together briskly. “Then, in
turn, it is but a matter of time
until friend Pond comes around
again.”

“That I wouldn’t know,” Natalie
Paskov said disinterestedly. “My
job is done. However, the poor man
seems so utterly opposed to return-

SPACEMAN ON A SPREE 53
ing to your service that I wouldn’t
be surprised if he remained in his
retirement, living on his Inalienable
Basic shares. He seems literally ter-
rified of being subjected to space
cafard again.”

But Hans Girard-Perregaux wag-
ged a finger negatively at her.
“Not after having enjoyed a better
way of life for the past decade. A
person is able to exist on the In-
alienable Basic dividends, but it it
almost impossible to bring oneself to
it once a fuller life has been en-
joyed. No, Seymour Pond will never
go back to the dullness of life the
way it is lived by nine-tenths of
our population.”

Natalie came to her feet. “Wdl,
gentlemen, you’ll get your bill — a
whopping one. I hope your need
justifies this bit of dirty work.
Frankly, I am considering my r^ig-
nation from Extraordinary Serv-
ices, although I’m no more anxious
to live on my Inalienable Basic than
poor Si Pond is. Good day, gentle-
men.”

She started toward the door.

The teevee-phone on Gubelin’s
desk lit up and even as Doctor
Doctor Girard-Perregaux was say-
ing unctuously to the girl, “Believe
me, my dear, the task you have
performed, though odious, wi 1 1
serve the whole race,” the teevee-
phone said :

“Sir, you asked me to keep track
of Pilot Seymour Pond. There is a
report on the news. He suicided this
morning.” END

★ ★ ★ ★

Worlds of Tomorrow • Feature

THE PROSPECT
OF IMMORTALITY

An Abridgement from the Book

BY R. C. W. ETTINGER

1: Frozen Death and Frozen Sleep—
and Some Consequences

Most of us now living have a
chance for personal, physical im-
mortality.

This remarkable proposition —
which may soon become a pivot of
personal and national life — is easi-
ly understood by joinings one estab-
lished fact to one reasonable as-
sumption.

The fact'. At liquid helium tem-
peratures, it is possible, right now,
to preserve dead people with essen-
tially no deterioration, indefinitely.

The assumption-. If civilization en-
dures, medical science should even-
tually be able to repair almost any
damage to the human body, includ-

ing freezing damage and senile de-
bility or other cause of death.

Hence we need only arrange to
have our bodies, after we die, stored
in suitable Freezers against the time
when science may be able to help us.
No matter what kills us, whether old
age or disease, and even if freezing
techniques are still crude when we
die, sooner or later our friends of
the future should be equal to the
task of reviving and curing us. This
is the essence of the main argument.

The arrangements will no doubt
be handled at first by individuals,
soon afterwards by private insur-
ance companies and perhaps later
by the Social Security system.

By preserving our bodies in as
nearly lifelike a condition as pos-

Copyright ® 1962 by R. C. W. Ettinger

54 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY 55

The world of tomorrow

today!

This condensation of a new, privately printed book is the first in
a series of features giving an up-to-the-minute account of how well
the world of science is catching up to the world of science fiction.
Here Mr. Ettinger, a physical scientist and a Fellow of the National
Science Foundation, investigates the potentialities of prolonged and
perhaps nearly eternal life — right now!

sible, it is clear that you and I, right
now, have a chance to avoid perma-
nent death. But is it a substantial
chance or only a remote one? I be-
lieve the odds are excitingly favor-
able, and it is purpose of this tract
to make this belief plausible. The
second (and of course primary) pur-
pose is to improve those very odds,
by encouraging the necessary efforts.

It is my hope that the cumulative
weight of the discussion will con-
vince the reader that his own life is
at stake and that his personal efforts
are urgently needed in this mighty
undertaking. (The pun should be
forgiveable.)

Let us spell out exactly what is
proposed. In particular, it must be
made very clear that our basic pro-
gram is not one of “suspended ani-
mation” and does not depend on any
special timetable of scientific prog-
ress, but can be instituted immedi-
ately.

It is simply proposed that, after
one dies a natural death, his body
be frozen and preserved at a tem-
perature near absolute zero, which
will prevent further deterioration
for an indefinite period. The body

will be damaged by the disease or
old age which is the cause of death,
and will be further damaged by
freezing, if the current crude meth-
ods are used. But it will not decay
nor suffer any more changes, and
one assumes that at some date scien-
tists wUl he able to restore life,
health and vigor — and these, in
fact, in greater measure than was
ever enjoyed in the first life.

Clearly, the Freezer is more at-
tractive than the grave, even if one
has doubts about the future capa-
bilities of science. With bad luck,
the frozen people will simply remain
dead. But with good luck the re-
suscitees will drink the wine of cen-
turies unborn. The likely prize is so
enormous that even slender odds
would be worth embracing.

The basic program is one of “sus-
pended death”, in the sense that
death is real by ordinary criteria,
but not absolute; dissolution is ar-
rested and not progressive. The
body cannot be revived by present
standards, but still is not very dead,
since the condition of the cells does
not differ greatly from that in life.
Setting aside for the moment the
question of repairing the cause of

56 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

death, actual full-body freezing and
revival of a human being is antici-
pated fairly soon by some workers.
Dr. James F. Connell, Jr. (St. Vin-
cent’s Hospital, New York) is re-
ported in 1962 to have said, “If all
the medical personnel involved with
this problem make a concerted ef-
fort, we will do it in less than five
years.”

II: The State of the Art

Our argument stands on three
legs: freezing, resuscitation and re-
pair. The first leg is strong; it is al-
ready possible to freeze bodies cold
enough to preserve them indefinite-
ly. Several authorities have reported
that metabolism is essentially inde-
tectable at liquid-nitrogen tempera-
tures (-197° C), although free radi-
cal activity may occur. At liquid
helium temperatures, however, a
few degrees above absolute zero,
the reaction rates are calculated to
be slower than at liquid-nitrogen
temperatures by a factor of about
ten trillion!

As to resuscitation, many workers
with laboratory animals have report-
ed successful resuscitation of mam-
mals frozen at temperatures not
much below that of freezing water,
and of lower organisms and cells at
temperatures as low as -272.2° C —
less than one degree above absolute
zero. Embryo chicken hearts, for
example, have been cooled to about
-190° C, then thawed out and beat-
ing resumed. Fowl sperm kept for a
year at that temperature has been
successfully used to inseminate hens,
producing fertile eggs and normal

chicks. Glycerol and similar protec- ■
five agents have shown promise in .
averting or minimizing freezing
damage. The mechanism of freezing
damage is still poorly understood,
though experimental work proceeds
vigorously. When the public be- '
comes interested in Freezers, prog-
ress should become much more
rapid.

As to repair, the immediate cause
of death for the people in the
Freezers — you and I — will usually
be the failure of some vital organ.
After thawing us, the future medicos
will have to repair or replace the
defective organ at once.

The use of “banks” of human spare
parts has received much attention.
Dr. L. L. Haynes is reported already
to have deep-frozen human organs
and returned them to life. Routine
transplant is not yet possible, be-
cause the “immune reaction” causes
the host’s body to reject the foreign
matter; but leading biologists such
as Dr. Jean Rostand are confident
this barrier will be overcome.

Perhaps the future medicos will
handle the situation by using ma-
chines to perform the vital function.
Dr. Lee B. Lusted (Professor of bio-
chemical engineering. University of
Rochester) thinks that within fifty
years it will be possible to replace
nearly all of the body organs by
compact artificial organs with built-
in electronic control systems. It is
even possible that the artificial or-
gans will work so well they will be
preferred over the biological ones.

Promising beginnings in organ re-
generation have also been made.
Professor Marcus Singer at Cornell

THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY 37

University, by manipulating nerve
tissue, has caused adult frogs to re-
grow amputated limbs, although
normally they cannot. As Dr. Singer
says, “Obviously, there is some prac-
tical interest in the possibility that
human beings might some day be
able to re-grow tissues and organs.”

The most delicate question, of
course, concerns the brain. This can
scarcely be grafted or re-grown
without creating a different person.
And the brain begins to deteriorate
within a few minutes after clinical
death. This appears to mean that, in
order to have a reasonably good
chance of early resuscitation, we
must arrange to die with well-
equipped freezing experts close at
hand. But even in the event of ex-
tensive hrain damage, there may be
some hope. One might also, of
course, decide not to wait for na-
tural death, but arrange for freezing
somewhat ahead of such time, thus
ensuring better bodily condition.

Ill: The Uses of Immortality

The people who glibly assert they
“wouldn’t want to live forever” are
not necessarily stupid; they just have
not given the matter much thought.
The main difficulty is that few
people have the remotest concep-
tion of what the future will be like.
They think of it dimly as mid-
twentieth century, plus maybe slid-
ing sidewalks, family helicopters
and a twenty-hour work week. They
fail to understand that the differ-
ences will be qualitative as well as
quantitative.

In particular, they fail to grasp

that people will be different, includ-
ing themselves. Mental qualities, in-
cluding both intellectual power and
personality or character, wUl be pro-
foundly altered, not only in our de-
scendants but in ourselves, in you
and me, the resuscitees. It is almost
taken for granted by experts in the
field that genetic science will in time
enable us to mold our children as
we please. For example. Dr. Philip
Sieketiz:

“I think we are approaching the
greatest event in human history,
even in the history of life on this
earth, and that is the deliberate
changing by man of many of the
biological processes . . . Already we
can very easily produce mutants in
bacterial strains; we will soon be
able to control these changes; and
it is not such a big jump from bac-
teria to plant, to animals or to man
himself ... we will be able to plan
ahead so that our children will be
what we would like them to be —
physically and even mentally.” And
Professor H. J. Muller, Nobel Prize
winner in genetics, states he is con-
vinced that man will remake himself
genetically: “We may attain to

modes of thought and living that
today would seem inconceivably
godlike.”

If your great-great grandson is a
seven-foot genius with shoulders a
yard broad, can you compete? Can
you live?

The problem is real, but there
are solutions. Somatic improvement
may stay abreast, or get ahead of,
genetic improvement. It will become
possible to perform extensive im-
provement in living individuals by

58 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

biological techniques, e.g. using r&-
generation with somatic mutation.
There is also vast potential in the
use of prostheses, mental as well as
physical, e.g. by coupling a human
mind to an electronic computer. In
fact, the man-machine combination
may be superior to any purely bio-
logical superman.

It is not easy to picture one’s ac-
tivities in the world of the future.
Presumably there will still be work
in the form of scientific investiga-
tion and perhaps administration,
and there will be artistic activities,
as well as the enjoyment of athletics
and human companionship. But
many people find the latter do not
give them much of a boot and can-
not conceive of themselves as scien-
tists or artists.

They must be reminded that not
only will the world be changed but
themselves also — both in their
ability to perform and their ability
to appreciate and enjoy. There are
already many forerunners ot these
techniques; tranquilizers and “psy-
chic energizers”, the electric stimu-
lation of local centers in the brain,
etc.

But there remains the question of
long-range goals and fundamental
values and motivations, of the na-
ture of happiness. The prospect of
immortality forces us to come to
grips with abstruse problems of psy-
chology and philosophy which have
heretofore been almost entirely the
province of the specialist. The main
problems of the future will be ex-
actly these “philosophical” questions,
which will become real concerns in
the life of the individual.

IV: Immortality and Religion

At first thought, one might expect
the aims and programs of the
Freezers to be fiercely opposed by
religious leaders and especially by
representatives of the “hereafter”
religions of Christianity and Islam.
After all, the notion that death is
not absolute and final, but a matter
of degree and reversible, seems to
do violence to the notion of “soul”
and to the duality of body and spirit
which plays an important part in
religion.

Nevertheless, I believe that ulti-
mately the religions will support the
Freezer programs, and that this sup-
port will be spearheaded by Roman
Catholics, for these two reasons:

Suicide is a sin.

As I understand it, Christians re-
gard both murder and suicide as
sinful under most circumstances, and
this whether by act of commission
or omission. Physicians are required
to take all available measures to
save life, and to prolong it, even if
the measures are not certain of suc-
cess. Temporary death, or clinical
death with a recognized chance of
resuscitation, can hardly be deemed
death at all, and hence the Freezers
must be recognized as a probable
means of saving or prolonging life.
It will then follow that failure to use
the Freezers is tantamount to suicide
or to murder.

Prolonging the lives of unbelievers
extends the opportunity to save
them.

There will be of course a stormy
period of confusion and soul-search-

THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY 59

ing, but in the end I believe the
churches must favor the Freezers.

V: The Economics of Immortality

Even though John K. Galbraith
and others have described our so-
ciety as “affluent”, most people know
in their bones this is balderdash. In
1958 the median American family
income -.vas only $5,050, which
might look good to a Hottentot but
is scarcely tolerable by our present
standards, and which seems entirely
intolerable if we dare lift our faces
from the dust long enough to catch
a glimpse of what may be and ought
to be. Our wants greatly exceed our
wealth, even though most of us are
not yet sophisticated enough ade-
quately to express those wants.

This being the case, one may tend
to be daunted by the likely costs of
a Freezer program, and still more
by the prospect of immortality with
its population problems.

Yet there is reason for optimism.
If we only assume progress contin-
ues more or less as it has done in
this century, we shall grow richer
rather rapidly. Since about 1890
the yearly increase in productivity
has averaged around 2.3%. If we
assume an average rate of increase
of income of 2.5% yearly for the
next 300 years, and if we assume
no inflation or other disturbing in-
fluence, then in the year 2258 the
median income will be over $8,000,-
000 a year! The average woman
will then have much more spend-
ing money than any movie star does
today — and still more important,
will have much more to spend it on.

If we take a really long view,
the production of wealth depends
dimply on the availability of matter,
energy and organization.

The kind of matter doesn’t mat-
ter: with the right techniques and
enough energy, any kind of atom
can be transmuted to any other
kind, in principle if not yet in prac-
tice. Energy wiU also be available
without limit. John E. Ullman of
Columbia University has predicted
that by 1968 nuclear fission energy
will become as cheap as energy
from conventional sources, and rap-
idly thereafter become much cheap-
er. When the fusion problem (con-
trolled thermonuclear reaction) is
solved, there will be a nearly bound-
less supply of fuel in the deuterium
of sea water.

Our trump card, finally, is that
unlimited organizing capacity is also
in sight, in the shape of intelligent,
self-propagating machines. Such a
machine need show only a small
profit. That is, it must be able to
reproduce itself from scratch and
also do some directly useful work
before it wears out. This is enough
to insure, on the compound-interest
principle, that starting with only one
machine we can in sufficient time
have as many machines and as much
wealth as we please. One expects,
of course, that in practice the profit
margin will be ample.

In a simplified, representational
sense, then, one may picture the
golden age society in which every
citizen owns a tremendous, intelli-
gent machine, which will scoop up
earth, or air, or water and spew
forth whatever is desired in any re-

60 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

quired amounts — whether caviar,
gold bricks, hernia operations, psy-
chiatric advice, impressionist paint-
ings, spaceships or pastel mink toilet
rolls. It will keep itself in repair
and, in fact, continuously improve
itself, and will build others like it-
self whenever required by an in-
crease in the owner’s family.

It is clear that, in the long run,
as long as the machines reproduce
themselves faster than people, there
can be no economic problem. But
now it is time to come down off
Olympus and consider some very
real and dangerous intermediate
problems, for example, the cost of
private freezers.

In rough figures, the total cost
of death at present — including fu-
neral, embalming, casket, cemetery
plot and perpetual care supplied by
an investment of funds to provide
maintenance costs — is typically in
the neighborhood of $1,000. Now
let us try to guess the cost of Freez-
ing.

The preparation of the body may
correspond roughly to a major op-
eration by a team of surgeons using
expensive cryogenic equipment and
therefore can perhaps be expected
to cost several hundred dollars.
More difficult to assess is the cost
of the Dormantory and its mainte-
nance, but there are some suggestive
known costs.

In Detroit in 1962 a mausoleum
crypt can be had for $1,250. The
mausoleum itself cost about $3,000,-
000 to build and holds 6,500 bodies.

The Freezer will tend to be more
expensive than this in that it must

be underground, or in a hillside, for
protection against bombing. On the
other hand, the Freezer need not be
as fancy nor as spacious as a mau-
soleum. Once it is filled up there is
no need for routine access. And
both the volume-to-surface ratio
and the insulation thickness can be
much greater for the Dormantory
than for an above-ground, routine-
access freezer, which much relieves
the refrigeration problem and thus
the cost.

As to the cost of installing and
maintaining the refrigeration equip-
ment, the simplest scheme (and
probably the most expensive) would
involve merely surrounding the stor-
age space with liquid helium and
insulating layers, replacing the liquid
helium as it evaporates.

Liquid helium in a 4,000 liter
spherical container 2 meters in dia-
meter, shielded by liquid nitrogen,
evaporates at about 0.2% per day.
If we consider a cubical storage
space 30 meters on an edge, this
will hold 13,500 bodies at 2 cubic
meters per body. If we assume the
evaporation rate is about propor-
tional to the area of the exposed
surface, as it ought to be, then the
liquid helium evaporating per day
would be roughly 3200 liters.

Liquid helium is quoted in Detroit
in 1962 at $7 per liter; and at this
figure the evaporation loss comes to
roughly $1.66 per day per body, or
about $600 per body per year. Actu-
ally the price for large amounts will
surelybe much lower. Helium is avail-
in large quantities. As to replenish-
ing the liquid nitrogen shield, liquid
nitrogen is only 50 cents per liter in

THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY 61

100 liter lots. Its latent heat of
vaporization per dollar’s worth is
much larger than that of helium,
and the thermal gradient responsible
for the heat leak could be made
very small thus minimizing the cost.

Since the cost of cooling and re-
cycling the helium will surely be
much less than the cost of simply
replacing it, perhaps it is not un-
reasonable to guess at a figure of
$200 per body per year for mainte-
nance as a first approximation. To
produce this much would require
capital of $6,667 invested at 3%.

Adding together the $1250 stor-
age space cost, the $6,667 capital
investment for refrigerating cost
and a few hundred dollars for prep-
aration of the body then yields a
rough total of $8,500 per body as
the tentative cost of a private Freez-
er program on a_ group basis.

VI: Au Revoir

The prize is Life — and not just
more of the life we know (although

even this would be sweet enough to
many) but a grander and more
glorious life unfolding in shapes,
colors and textures we can yet only
glimpse. To win this prize will re-
quire mighty efforts — not by
George, but by you and me.

Not everybody will reach for Life.
There are many who fear change
and danger more than death itself,
and who value ease, comfort and
momentary security above the hope
of heaven. There are the death-
seekers and the failure-lovers to
whom effort and risk are the worst
of all evils.

Yet we can be certain that force-
ful leaders will appear. Large num-
bers of Americans will soon come not
only to perceive but to feel the vast-
ness and the grandeur of the prize,
and to understand that all other
prizes, all previous goals, are sec-
ondary.

Then, for the first time in the
history of the world, it will be Au
Revoir, but not good-by.

We do not hove copies of The Prospect of Immortality for sale,
nor is there at present an edition available through book stores.
A fev.' copies of the privately printed first edition, plastic bound,
containing the complete text plus bibliographical data, etc.,
may be ordered at $2 each direct from the author: R. C. W.
Ettinger, 24041 Stratford, Oak Park 37, Michigan.

Worlds of Tomorrow • Novelette

A GUEST
OF GANYMEDE

By C. C. MacAPP

Illustrated by Glunta

On Jupiter’s moons great
treasure awaits a daring
man — and so does Death!

I

H is employer had paid enor-
mously to have the small ship
camouflaged as a chunk of aster-
oid-belt rock, and Gil Murdoch had
successfully maneuvered it past the
quarantine. Now it lay snugly melt-
ed into the ice; and if above them
enough water had boiled into space
to leave a scar, that was nothing
unique on Ganymede’s battered
surface. In any case, the Terran
patrols weren’t likely to come in
close.

62 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

Murdoch applied heat forward
and moved the ship gingerly ahead.

“What are you doing now?” Wav-
erill demanded.

Murdock glanced at the blind
man. “Trying to find a clear spot,
sir, so I can see into the place.”

“What for? Why don’t you just
contact them?”

“Just being careful, sir. After all, ,
we don’t know much about them.”
Murdoch kept the annoyance out
of his voice. He had his own rea-
sons for wanting a preliminary look
at the place, though the aliens had

64 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
undoubtedly picked them up thou-
sands of miles out and knew exact-
ly where they were now.

Something solid, possibly a rock
imbedded in the ice, bumped along
the hull. Murdoch stopped the ship,
then moved on more slowly.

The viewscreens brightened. He
stopped the drive, then turned off
the heat forward. Water, milky
with vapor bubbles, swirled around
them, gradually clearing. In a few
minutes it froze solid again and he
could see.

They were not more than ten
feet from the clear area carved out
of the ice. Murdoch had the view-
point of a fish in murky water,
looking into an immersed glass jar.
The place was apparently a perfect
cylinder, walled by a force-field or
whatever held back the ice. He
could see the dark translucency of
the opposite wall, about fifty yards
away and extending down eighty
or ninety feet from the surface. He’d
only lowered the ship a third that
far, so that from here he looked
down upon the plain one-story
building and the neat lawns and
hedges around it.

The building and greenery occu-
pied only one-half of the area, the
half near Murdoch being paved en-
tirely with gravel and unplanted.
That, he presumed, was where
they’d land. The building was fitted
to the shape of its half-circle, and
occupied most of it, like a half cake
set in a round box with a little
space around it. A gravel walkway,
bordered by grass, ran along the
straight front of the building and
around the back curve of it. The

hedges surrounded the half-circle
at the outside.

There was an inconspicuous
closed door in the middle of the
building. There were no windows
in the flat gray wall.

The plants looked Terran, and
apparently were rooted in soil,
though there must be miles of ice
beneath. Artificial sunlight poured
on the whole area from the top. Mur-
doch had heard, and now was sure,
that something held an atmosphere
in the place.

“What are we waiting for?” Wav-
erill wanted to know.

Murdoch reached for a switch
and said, simply, “Hello.”

T he voice that answered was
precise and uninflected. “Who
are you.”

“My employer is Frederick Wav-
erill. He has an appointment.”
“And you.”

“Gilbert Murdoch.”

There was a pause, then, "Gil-
bert Andrew Murdoch. Age thirty-
four. Born in the state called Illi-
nois.”

Murdoch, startled, hesitated,
then realized he’d probably been
asked a question. “Er — that’s
right.”

“There is a price on your head
Murdoch.”

Murdoch hesitated again, then
said, “There’d be a price on your
own if Earth dared to put it there.”
Waverill gripped the arms of his
seat and stood up, too vigorously
for the light gravity. “Never mind
all that. I hired this man because
he could make the contact and get

me here. Can you give me back
my eyes?”

“We can but first of all I must
warn both of you against trying to
steal anything from us or prying
into our methods. Several Terrans
have tried but none have escaped
alive.”

Waverill made an impatient ges-
ture. “I’ve already got more money
than I Cain count. I’ve spent a lot
of it, a very great lot, on the metal
you wanted, and I have it here in
the ship.”

“We have already perceived it
and we do not care what it has
cost you. We are not altruists.”

That, thought Murdoch, could
be believed. He felt clammy. If they
knew so much about him, they
might also be aware of the years
he’d spent sifting and assessing the
rumors about them that circulated
around the tenuous outlaw com-
munity of space. Still, he’d been as
discreet as was humanly possible.

He wondered if Waverill knew
more than he pretended. He
thought not; Murdoch’s own knowl-
edge was largely meticulous de-
duction. This much Murdoch knew
with enough certainty to gamble
his life on it: the treatments here
involved a strange virus-like thing
which multiplied in one’s veins and,
for presumably selfish or instinc-
tive reasons, helped the body to re-
pair and maintain itself. He knew
for dead certain that the aliens al-
ways carefully destroyed the virus
in a patient’s veins before letting
him go.

He thought he knew why.

The problem was to smuggle out

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 65
any viable amount of the virus.
Even a few cells, he thought, would
be enough if he could get away
from here and get them into his
own blood. For it would multiply;
and what wotild be the going price
for a drop of one’s blood — for a
thousandth of a drop — if it
carried virtual immortality?

A man could very nearly buy
Earth.

T he voice was speaking again.

“Move straight ahead. The field
will be opened for you.”

Murdoch got the ship moving.
He was blanked out again by the
melting ice until they popped free
into air, with an odd hesitation and
then a rush. The ship was borne
clear on some sort of a beam. He
could hear water cascading outside
the hull for a second, then it was
quiet. He glanced at the aft viewer
and could see the tunnel where
they’d come out, with a little water
still in the bottom, confined by the
force-field again. The water that
had escaped was running off along
a ditch that circled the clearing.

They were lowered slowly to the
gravelled area. “Leave the ship,”
the voice directed, “and walk to the
doorway you see.”

Murdoch helped Waverill
through the inner and outer hatches
and led him toward the building.
His information was that a force
barrier sliced off this half of the
circle from the other, and he could
see that the hedges along the di-
ameter pressed against some invis-
ible plane surface. He hesitated as
they came to it, and the voice said.

66 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
“Walk Straight ahead to the door.
The field will be opened for you.”

He guided Waverill in the right
direction. As they passed the mid-
point he felt an odd reluctance, a
tingle and a slight resistance. Wav-
erill grunted at it, but said nothing.

The door slid open and they
were in a plain room with doors
at the left and right. The outer
door elosed behind them. The door
on the right opened and Murdoch
took Waverill through it. They
were in a second room of the same
size, bare except for a bench along
one wall.

The voice said, “Remove your
clothing and pile it on the floor.”

Waverill complied without pro-
test, and after a second Murdoch
did too. “Step back,” the voice said.
They did.

The clothing dropped through
the floor, sluggishly in the light
gravity. Murdoch grunted. There
were weapons built into his clothes,
and he felt uneasy without them.

At the end of the room away
from the middle of the building
was another door like the one they’d
come through. It opened and a robot
walked in.

It was humanoid in shape, flesh-
colored but without animal details.
The head had several features other
than the eyes, but none of them was
nose, mouth or ears. It stood look-
ing at them for a minute, then said
in the familiar voice, “Do not be
alarmed if you feel something now.”

There was a tingling, then a
warmth, then a vibration, and some
other sensations not easy to class-
ify Murdoch couldn’t tell whether

they came from the robot or not.
It was obvious, though, that the
robot was scanning them. He re-
sisted an urge to move his hands
more behind him. He’d been well
satisfied with the delicate surgery,
but now he imagined it awkward
and obvious.

The robot didn’t seem to notice
anything.

After a minyte the robot said,
“Through the door where I entered
you will find a bedroom and a bath
and a place to cook. It is best you
retire now and rest.”

Murdoch offered his arm to
Waverill, who grumbled a little but
came along.

The voice went on, seeming now
to come from the ceiling, “Treat-
ment will begin tomorrow. During
convalescence Murdoch will care
for Waverill. Sight will be restored
within four days and you will be
here one day after that then you
may return to your ship. You will
be protected from each other while
you are here. If you keep your
bargain you will be of no concern
to us after you leave.”

Murdoch watched Waverill’s
face but it showed nothings He was
sure the billionaire already had ar-
rangements to shut him up perma-
nently as soon as he was no longer
needed, and he didn’t intend, of
course, to let those arrangements
work out.

II

I t developed that when the robot
spoke of days, it meant a twen-
ty-four-hour cycle of light and dark.

with temperatures to suit. Under
other circumstances, the place would
have been comfortable.

The pantry was stocked with
Earthside food that didn’t help
Murdoch’s confidence any, since it
was further evidence of the aliens’
contacts with men. He cooked eggs
and bacon, helped Waverill eat,
then washed up the dishes.

He felt uneasy without his
clothes; the more because the
weapons in them, through years of
habit, were almost part of himself.
He thought. I’m getting too jumpy
too soon. My nerves have to last
a long time yet.

While he was putting the dishes
to drain, the robot walked into the
room and watched him for a mo-
ment. Then it said to Waverill,
“Keep your hand on my shoulder
and walk behind me.” It reached
for Waverill’s right hand and placed
it on its own right shoulder, reveal-
ing in the process that its arm was
double-jointed. Then it simply
walked through the wall. The blind
man, without flinching and perhaps
without being aware, passed
through the seemingly firm sub-
stance.

When they were gone, Murdoch
went quickly to the wall and passed
his hands over it. Solid.

The voice came from the ceiling,
“You can not penetrate the walls
except when told to. Any place you
can reach in this half of the
grounds is open to you. The half
where your ship is will remain cut
off. You may amuse yourself as
you wish so long as you do not
willfully damage anything. We have

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 67
gone to great effort to make this
place comfortable for Terrans. Do
not impair it for those who may
come later.”

Murdoch smiled inwardly. He’d
known the walls would be solid;
he’d only wanted to check the
alien’s watchfulness. Now he knew
that there was more to it than just
the robot, and that the voice was
standard wherever it came from.

Not that the information helped
any.

H e walked back to the mid-
dle of the building and went
through the door across the lobby.
In that half of the building were a
library, a gymnasium and what
was evidently a Solar System mu-
seum. There was nothing new to
him in the museum. Though there
were useful tables and data in the
library, he was too tense to study.
The gymnasium he’d use later.

He went outside, walking ginger-
ly on the gravel. The rear of the
building was a featureless semi-
circle, the lawns and hedges un-
varied. He took deep breaths of the
air perfumed by flowers.

He jumped at a sudden buzz near
his elbow. A bee circled up from a
blossom and headed for the top of
the building to disappear over the
edge. Murdoch considered jumping
for a hold and hauling himself up
to the top of the building to see if
there were hives there, but decided
not to risk the aliens’ displeasure.
He realized now that he’d been
hearing the bees all the time with-
out recognizing it, and was annoyed
at himself for not being more alert.

68 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
He paid more attention now, and
saw that there were other insects
too; ants and a variety of beetles.
There were no birds, mammals, or
reptiles that he could see.

He parted the hedge and leaned
close to the clear wall, shading the
surface with his hands to see into
the ice. There were a few rocks in
sight. He found one neatly sliced
in two by the force-field, or what-
ever it was, showing a trail of stria-
tions in the ice above it where it
had slowly settled. On Ganymede,
the rate of sink of a cool rock would
be very slow in the ice.

Far back in the dimness he could
see a few vague objects that might
have been large rocks or ships.
There were some other things with
vaguly suggestive shapes, like long-
eroded artifacts. Nothing that
couldn’t have been the normal fall-
in from space.

He went to the front of the
building again and stood for a
while, looking at the graveled other
half of the place. He couldn’t see
any insects there, and not a blade
of grass. He approached the barrier
and leaned against it, to see how it
felt. It was rigid, but didn’t feel
glass-hard. Rather it had a very
slight surface softness, so he could
press a fingernail in a fraction of
a millimeter.

He remembered that on Earth
bees would blunder into a glass
pane, and looked around to see if
they hit the barrier. They didn’t. An
inch or so from it, they turned in
the air and avoided it. Neither
could he see any insects crawling
on the invisible surface. He pressed

his face closer, and noticed again j
the odd reluctance he’d felt when j
crossing on the way in. |

At ground level, a dark line not j
more than a quarter of an inch j
thick marked where the barrier 3
split the soil. Gravel heaped up
against it on both sides. \

He looked again toward the ship.

If things went according to plan,
the ship’s proximity alarm would
go off some time within the next
two days. He didn’t think the aliens
would let him go to the ship, but
he expected the diversion to help
him check out something he’d heard
about the barrier.

He flexed his thumbs, feeling the
small lumps Implanted in the web
of flesh between thumb and finger
on each hand. He’d practiced get-
ting the tiny instruments in and out
until he could do it without think-
ing. But now the whole project
seemed ridiculously optimistic.

He felt annoyed at himself again.
It’s the aliens, he thought, that are
getting my nerves. I’ve pulled plen-
ty of jobs as intricate as this with-
out fretting this way.

H e began another circuit around
the building, and was at the
rear when the voice said, almost at
his shoulder, “Murdoch, Waverill
wants you.”

His employer lay on his cot,
looking drowsy. He scowled at
Murdoch’s footsteps. “Where you
been? I want a drink.”

Murdoch involuntarily glanced
around. “Will they let you have it,
sir?” !

The voice came from the ceiling ^

this time. “One ounce of hundred-
proof liquor every four hours.”

“Is there any here?” Murdoch
asked.

“Tell us where to find it and we
will get it from your ship.”

Murdoch told them where the
ship’s supply of beverages was
stowed, and headed for the front
of the building. The robot was al-
ready in the lobby. It allowed him
to follow outside, but said, “Stand
back from the barrier.”

Murdoch leaned against the
building, trying not to show his
eagerness. This was an unexpected
break. He' watched the ground level
as the robot passed through the
barrier. The dark line in the ground
didn’t change. The gravel stayed in
place on both sides. Neither did the
plants to the sides move. Evidently
the barrier only opened at one spot
to let things through.

The robot had no trouble with
the hatches, and came out quickly
with a bottle in one hand. Murdoch
worried again whether it had dis-
covered that the ship’s alarm was
set. If so, it didn’t say anything as
it drew near. It handed Murdoch
the bottle and disappeared into the
building.

After a few moments Murdoch
followed. He found Waverill asleep,
but at his footsteps the older man
stirred. “Murdoch? Where’s that
drink?”

“Right away, sir.” Murdoch got
ice from the alien’s pantry, put it
in a glass with a little water and
poured in about a jigger of rye. He
handed it to Waverill, then poured
himself a straight shot. Rye wasn’t

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 69
his favorite, but it might ease his
nerves a little.

“Mm,” said Waverill, “ ’S better ”

Murdoch couldn’t see any marks
on him. “Did they stick any needles
into you, sir?”

“I’m not paying you to be nosey.”

“Of course not, sir. I only wanted
to know so I wouldn’t touch you
in a sore spot.”

“There are no sore spots,” Wav-
erill said. “I want to sleep a couple
of hours, so go away. Then I’ll want
a steak and a baked potato.”

“Surely, sir.”

Murdoch went outside again and
toured the grounds without seeing
anything new. He went to the bar-
rier and stared at the ship for a
while. Then, to work off tension,
he went into the gymnasium and
took a workout. He had a shower,
looked in on Waverill and found
him still asleep, then went back to
the library. The books and tapes
were all Terran, with no clues about
the aliens. The museum was no
more helpful. It was a relief when
he heard Waverill calling.

There were steaks in the larder,
and potatoes. Waverill grumbled at
the wait while Murdoch cooked.
The older man still acted a little
drowsy, but had a good appetite.
After eating he wanted to rest
again.

Murdoch wandered some more,
then forced himself to sit down in
the library and pretend to study.
He went over his plans again and
again.

They were tenuous enough. He
had to get a drop of Waverill’s
blood sometime within the next day

70 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
or two, and get it past the barrier.
Then he had to get it into the ship
and, once away from Ganymede,
inoculate himself. The problem of
Waverill didn’t worry him. The
drowiness would have to be coped
with, but based on the timetable
Waverill’s symptoms would give
him, he should be able to set up a
flight plan which would allow him
to nap.

The time dragged agonizingly.
He had two more drinks during the
“afternoon”, took another workout
and a couple of turns around the
building, and finally saw the sun-
lamps dimming. After that there
was a time of lying on his bunk
trying to force himself to relax.
Finally he did sleep.

Ill

H e was awake again with the
first light; got up and wan-
dered restlessly into the pantry. In
a few minutes he heard Waverill
stirring. “Murdoch!” came the older
man’s voice.

Murdoch went to him. “Yes, sir.
1 was just going to get breakfast.”
“I can see the light!”

“You — that’s wonderful, sir!”

“I can see the light! Dammit,
where are you? Take me outside!”
“It’s no brighter out there, sir.”
Murdoch was dismayed. He’d count-
ed on another day before Waverill’s
sight began to return; with a chance
to arrange a broken drinking glass,
a knife in Waverill’s way, some-
thing to bring blood in an apparent
accident. Now. . .

“Take me outside!”

“Yes, sir.” Murdoch, his mind
spinning, guided the older man.

The door slid open for them and
Waverill crowded through. As he
stepped on the gravel with his bare
feet, he said, “Ouch! Damn it!”
“Step lightly, sir, and it won’t
hurt.” Murdoch had a sudden wild
hope that Waverill would cut his
feet on a sharp pebble. But there
were no sharp pebbles; they were
all rounded; and the light gravity
made it even more unlikely.

Waverill raised his head and
swung it to the side. “I can see spots
of light up there.”

“The sunlamps, sir. They’re get-
ting brighter.”

“I can see where they are.” The
older man’s voice was shaky. He
looked toward Murdoch. “I can’t
see you, though.”

“It’ll come back gradually, sir.
Why don’t you have breakfast now?”
Waverill told him what to do
with breakfast. “I want to stay out
here. How bright is it now? Is it
like full daylight yet?”

“No, sir. It’ll be a while yet. You’ll
be able to feel it on your skin.” Mur-
doch was clammy with the fear
that the other’s sight would im-
prove too fast. He looked around
for some sharp corner, some twig
he could maneuver the man into.
He didn’t see anything.

“What’s that sweet smell?” Wav-
erill wanted to know.

“Flowers, sir. There’s a blossom-
ing hedge around the walkways.”
“I’U be able to see flowers again.
I’ll. . .” The older man caught him-
self as if ashamed. “Tell me what
this place looks like.”

Murdoch described the grounds,
meanwhile guiding Waverill slowly
around the curved path. Some-
where, he thought, there’ll be some-
thing sharp I can bump him into.
He had a wild thought of running
the man into a wall; but a bloody
nose would be too obvious.

“I can feel the warmth now,”
Waverill said, “and I can tell that
they’re brighter.” He was swiveling
his head and squinting, experiment-
ing with his new traces of vision.

M urdoch carried on a con-
versation with half his atten-
tion, while his mind churned. He
thought. I’ll have to resist the feel-
ing that it’s safer here in back of
the building. They’ll be watching
everywhere. He wished he could get
the man inside; under the cover of
serving breakfast he could impro-
vise something. I’m sweating, he
thought. I can just begin to feel the
lamps, but I’m wet all over. I’ve
got to —

He drew in his breath sharply.
From somewhere he heard the buzz
of a bee. His mind leaped upon the
sound. He stopped walking, and
Waverill said. “What’s wrong with
you?”

“Nothing. I — stepped on a big
pebble.”

“They all feel big to me. Damned
outrage; taking away a man’s. . .”
Waverill’s voice trailed off as he
started experimenting with his eyes
again.

There were more bees now, and
presently Murdoch saw one loop
over the edge of the building and
search along the hedge. The first

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 71
of them, he thought. There’ll be
more. He looked along the hedge.
Most of the blossoms hadn’t really
closed for the night, though the
petals were drawn together. He
walked as slowly as he dared. The
buzzing moved tantalizingly closer,
then away.

A second buzz added itself. He
heard the insect move past them,
then caught it in the corner of his
eye.

Waverill stopped. “Is that a bee?
Here?”

“I guess they keep them to fer-
tilize the plants, sir.”

“They bother me. I can’t tell
where they are.”

“I’ll watch out for them, sir.”

He could see the insect plainly
now, and thought, I have an excuse
to watch it. The buzz changed pitch
as the bee started to settle, then
changed again as it moved on a
few feet. Murdoch clamped his
teeth in frustration. He tried to
wipe his free hand where trousers
should have been, and discovered
that his thigh was sweaty too. He
thought, surely Waverill must feel
how sweaty my arm is.

The bee flirted with another
flower, then settled on a petal.
Tense, Murdoch subtly moved
Waverill toward the spot. He could
see every move of the insect’s legs
as it crawled into the bell of the
flower.

“You can smell the blossoms
more now, sir,” he said. His throat
felt dry, and he thought his voice
sounded odd. “It’s warming up and
bringing out the smell, I guess.” He
halted, and tried not to let his arm

72 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
tense or tremble. “This is a light
blue blossom. Can you see it?”

“I — I’m not sure. I can see a
bright spot a little above my head
and right in front of me.”

“That’s a reflection off the ice,
sir. The flower’s down here.” Hold-
ing his breath, he took Waverill’s
hand and moved it toward the flow-
er. He found himself gritting his
teeth and wincing as Waverill’s
fingers explored delicately around
the flower.

The bee crawled out, apparently
not aware of anything unusual, and
moved away a few inches. It settled
on a leaf and began working its
legs together.

Murdoch felt like screaming.

Waverill’s fingers stopped their
exploration, then, as the bee was
silent, began again. Waverill bent
over to bring his eyes closer to his
hand.

S haking with anxiety now, Mur-
doch executed the small move-
ments of his right hand that
forced the tiny instrument out from
between his thumb and forefinger.
He felt a panicky desire to hurry,
and forced himself to move slowly.
He transferred the titay syringe to
his left hand, which was nearer
Waverill. Waverill was about to
pluck the blossom. Murdoch moved
his right hand forward, trying —
in case the aliens could see, though
he had his body in the way — to
make the move casual. He flicked
a finger near the bee.

The bee leaped into the air, its
buzz high-pitched and loud. Wav-
erill tensed.

Murdoch cried, “Look out, sir!”
and grabbed at Waverill’s hand. He
jabbed the miniature syringe into
the fleshy part of the hand, at the
outside, just below the wrist.

“Damn you!” Waverill bellowed,
slapping at his right hand with his
left. He jerked away from Mur-
doch.

“Here, sir! Let me help you!”

“Get away from me, you clumsy
fool!”

“Please, sir. Let me get the sting-
er out. You’ll squeeze more poison
into your skin.”

Waverill faced him, a hand
raised as if to strike. Then he low-
ered it. “All right, damn you; and
be careful about it.”

Shakily, Murdoch took Waverill’s
hand. The syringe, dangling from
the skin, held a trace of red in its
minute plastic bulb. Murdoch gasp-
ed for breath and fought to make
his fingers behave. He got hold of
the syringe and drew it out. Pre-
tending to drop it, he hid it in the
junction of the third and fourth
fingers of his left hand. He kept
his body between them and the
building, and tried to make his ac-
tions convincing. “There. It’s out,
sir.”

Waverill was still cursing in a
low voice. Presently he stopped,
but his face was still hard with
anger. “Take me inside.”

“Yes, sir.” Murdoch was weak
with reaction. He drew a painful
breath, gave the older man his left
arm and led him back.

The tiny thing between his fin-
gers felt as large and as conspicuous
as a handgun.

m

M urdoch felt as if the entire
place was lined with eyes,
all focused on his left hand. The
act of theft clearly begun, his life
in the balance, he felt now the icy
nausea of fear; a feeling familiar
enough, and which he knew how
to control, but which he still didn’t
like. Fear. It’s a strange thing, he
thought. A peculiar thing. If you
analyzed it, you could resolve it in-
to the physical sick feeling and the
wish in your mind, a very fervent
wish, that you were somewhere else.
Sometimes, if it caught you tightly
enough, it was almost paralyzing so
that your limbs and even your lungs
seemed to be on strike. When fear
gripped him he always remember-
ed back to that turning point, that
act that had made him an outlaw
and an exile from Earth.

He’d been a pilot in the Space
Force, young, just out of the Acad-
emy, and the bribe had seemed very
large and the treason very small.
It seemed incredibly naive, now,
that he should not have understood
that a double-cross was necessarily
a part of the arrangement.

It was in escaping at all, against
odds beyond calculating, that he
had learned that he thought faster
and deeper than other men, and
that he had guts. Having guts turn-
ed out to be a different thing than
he had imagined. It didn’t mean
that you stood grinning and calm
while others went mad with fear.
It meant you suffered all the panic,
all the actual physical agony they
did, but that you somehow stuck

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 73
to the gun, took the buffeting and
still had in a corner of your being
enough wit to throw the counter-
punch or think through to the way
out. And that’s what he had to do
now. Endure the fear and keep
his wits.

The robot had responded to
Waverill’s loud demand. It barely
glanced at Waverill’s hand, said, “It
will heal quickly” and left. So far
as Murdoch could tell, it didn’t
look at him.

As soon as he dared, he went
and took a shower. In the process
of lathering he inserted the syringe
into the slit between thumb and
forefinger of his left hand. In that
hiding-place was a small plastic
sphere holding a substance which
ought to be nutrient to the virus.
It was delicate work, but he’d prac-
ticed well and his fingers were un-
der control now; and he got the
point of the syringe into the sphere
and squeezed. He relaxed the
squeeze, felt the bulb return slowly
to shape as it drew out some of
the gummy stuff. He squeezed it
back in, let the shower rinse the
syringe and got that back into the
pouch in his right hand.

He didn’t dare discard it. There
was always the possibility of fail-
ure and a second try, though, the
timing made it very remote. If the
surgery was right, the pouches in
his hand were lined with something
impervious, so that none of the
virus would get into his blood too
soon. He lathered very thoroughly
and rinsed off, then let a blast of
warm air dry him. He felt neither
fear nor elation now. Rather there

74 WRLDS OF TOMORROW
was a let-down, and a weary ap-
prehension at the trials ahead. The
next big step was to get the small
sphere past the barrier ahead of the
time of leaving. He was pretty sure
that he couldn’t smuggle it out on
his person. The alien’s final exami-
nation and sterilization would pre-
vent that.

N ow there came the agony
of waiting for the next step.
He hadn’t been able to rig things
tightly enough to predict within
several hours when it would come.
It might be in one hour or in ten.
A derelict was drifting in. He’d ar-
ranged that, but it might be late or
it might be intercepted. He pre-
pared a meal for Waverill and him-
self; sweated out the interval and
cooked another. He wandered from
library to gymnasium to out-of-
doors, and fought endlessly the de-
sire to stand at the barrier and stare
at the ship.

The robot examined Waverill
and revealed only that things were
going well. Waverill spent most of
his time bringing objects before his
eyes, squinting and twisting his
face, swallowed up in the ecstasy
of his slowly returning vision. When
darkness came the older man slept.
Murdoch lay twisting on his own
couch or dozed fitfully, beset with
twisted dreams.

When the ship’s alarm went off
he didn’t know at first whether it
was real or another of the dreams.

His mind was sluggish in clear-
ing, and when he sat up he could
hear sounds at the front of the
building. Suddenly in a fright that

he would be too late, he jumped
up and ran that way. The robot
was already out of the building. It
turned toward him with a sugges-
tion of haste. “What is this.”

Murdoch tried to act startled.
“The ship’s alarm! There’s some-
thing headed in! Maybe Earth Pa-
trol!”

“Why did you leave the alarm
on.”

“We — 1 guess 1 forgot in the
excitement.”

“That was dangerous stupidity.
How is the alarm powered.”

“It’s self-powered. Rechargable
batteries.”

“You are fortunate that it is only
a dead hull drifting by, otherwise
we would have to dispose of you
at once. Stay here. I will shut it off.”

Murdoch pretended to protest
mildly, then stood watching the ro-
bot go. His hands were moving in
what he hoped looked like a gesture
of futility. He got the plastic sphere
out of its hiding-place and thumbed
it like a marble. He held his breath.
The robot crossed the barrier. Mur-
doch flipped the sphere after it. He
saw it arc across the line and
bound once, then he lost it in the
gravel. In the dim light from Jupi-
ter, low on the horizon, he could
not find it again. Desperately, he
memorized the place in relation to
the hedge. When he and Waverill
left, there would be scant time to
look for it.

The robot didn’t take long to
solve the ship’s hatches, go in
through the lock, and locate the
alarm. The siren chopped off in
mid-scream. The robot came back

out and started toward him. In-
voluntarily, he backed up against
the building, wondering what the
robot (or its masters) right deduce
with alien senses, and whether swift
punishment might strike him the
next instant. But the robot passed
him silently and disappeared in-
doors.

After a while he followed it in-
side, lay down on his couch, and
resumed the fitful wait.

T he next morning Waverill’s
eyes followed him as he fixed
breakfast. There was life in them
now, and purpose. The man looked
younger, more vigorous, too.

Murdoch, trying not to sound
nervous, asked, “Can you see more
now, sir?”

“A little. Sit me so the light falls
on my plate.”

Murdoch watched the other’s at-
tempts to eat by sight rather than
feel, adding mentally to his own
time-table of the older man’s re-
covery. Apparently Waverill could
see his plate, but no details of the
food on it. There was no more
drowsiness, though. The movements
were deft except that they didn’t
yet correlate with the eyes. The
eyes seemed to have a little trouble
matching up too, sometimes. No
doubt it would take a while to re-
store the reflexes lost over the
years.

Waverill walked the grounds
alone in mid-morning. Murdoch,
following far enough behind not to
draw a rebuff, took the opportunity
to spot his small treasure in the
gravel beyond the barrier. Once

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 75
found, it was dismayingly visible.
But there was nothing he could do
now. He was sweating again, and
hoped with a sort of half-prayer
to, Fortune that his nerves wouldn’t
start to shatter once more.

He made lunch, then set himself
the job of waiting out the afternoon.
Ages later he cooked dinner. He
managed to eat most of his steak,
envying Waverill the wolfish appe-
tite that made quick work of the
meal.

The long night somehow wore
through, and he embraced eagerly
the small respite of breakfast.

He felt unreal when the alien
voice said, “Do not bother to wash
the dishes. Lie down on your bunks
for your final examination. When
you awake you may leave.”

The fear spread through him
again as he moved slowly to his
couch. He thought. If they’ve
caught me, this is when they’ll kill
me. He was afraid, no doubt of
that; all the old symptoms were
there. But, oddly, there was a trace
of perverse comfort in the thought:
Maybe I’ve lost. Maybe I’ll just
never wake up. Then dizziness hit
him. He was aware of a brief,
feeble effort to resist it, then he
slid into darkness.

H e came awake still dizzy,
and with a drugged feeling.
His mouth was dry. Breath came
hard at first. He tried to open his
eyes, but his lids were too stiff. He
spent a few minutes just getting his
breath to working, then he was able
to open his eyes a little. When he
sat up there was a wash of nausea.

It WORLDS OF TOMORROW

He sat on the edge of the bunk,
head hung, until it lessened. Grad-
ually he felt stronger.

Waverill was sitting up too,
looking no better than Murdoch
felt. He seemed to recover faster,
though. Murdoch thought. He’s ac-
tually healthier than I am now. I
hope he hasn’t become a superman.

The voice from the ceiling said,
“Your clothes are in the next room.
Dress and leave at once. The bar-
riers will be opened for you.”

Murdoch got to his feet and
headed for the other room. He
paused to let Waverill go ahead,
and noticed that Waverill had no
trouble finding the door. The older
man wasn’t talking this morning,
and the jubilation he must feel at
seeing again was confined, out-
wardly, to a tight grin.

They dressed quickly, Murdoch
noting in the process that his ;
clothes had been gone over care-
fully and all weapons removed. It
didn’t matter. But it did matter'
that he had to collect his prize on !
the way to the ship, and the sweaty
anxiety was with him.

As they went out the door, Wav-
erill stopped and let his eyes sweep
about the grounds. What a cool ;
character he is, Murdoch thought. i
Not a word. Not a sign of emotion. \

Waverill turned and started to-
ward the ship. Murdoch let him get
a step ahead. His own eyes were
searching the gravel. For a moment
he had the panicky notion that it
was gone; then he spotted it. He
wouldn’t have to alter his course
to reach it. He saw Waverill flinch
a little as they crossed the barrier.

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 77

then he too felt the odd sensation.
He kept going, trying to bring his
left foot down on the capsule. He
managed to do it.

Taut with anxiety, he paused and
half-turned as if for a last look back
at the place. He could feel the
sphere give a little; or maybe it was
a pebble sinking into the ground.
He twisted his foot. He thought he
could feel something crush. He hesi-
tated, in the agony of trying to de-
cide whether to go on or to make
more sure by dropping something
and pretending to pick it up. He
didn’t have anything to drop. He
thought. I’ve got to go on or they’ll
suspect. He turned. Waverill had
stopped and was looking back at
him keenly. Murdoch gripped him-
self, kept his face straight, and
went on.

Waverill had to grope a little
getting into the ship, as though his
hands still didn’t correlate with his
eyes, but it was clear that he could
see all right, even in the ship’s dim
interior. Murdoch said, “Your eyes
seem to be completely well, sir.”
Waverill was playing it cool too.
“They don’t match up very well
yet, and I have to experiment to
focus. It’ll come back, though.” He
went casually to his seat and low-
ered himself into it.

Murdoch got into the pilot’s seat.
“Better strap in, sir.”

H e didn’t have long to won-
der how they’d be sent off;
the ship lifted and simply passed
through whatever served as a ceil-
ing.

There was no restraint when

78 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
Murdoch turned on the gravs and
took over. He moved off toward
Ganymede’s north pole, gaining al-
titude slowly, watching his screens,
listening to the various hums and
whines as the ship came alive. The
radar would have to stay off until
they were away from Ganymede,
but the optical system showed noth-
ing threatening. He moved farther
from the satellite, keeping it be-
tween him and Jupiter.

“Hold it here,” Waverill said.

Letting the ship move ahead on
automatic, Murdoch turned in pre-
tended surprise. “What. .

Waverill had a heat gun trained
steadily on him. “I’ll give you the
course.”

Murdoch casually reached down
beside the pilot’s chair. A compart-
ment opened under his fingers, and
he lifted a gun of his own.

Waverill’s mouth went tight as
he squeezed the trigger. Nothing
happened. Waverill glanced at the
weapon. Rage moved across his
face. He hoisted the gun as if to
throw it, then stopped as Murdoch
lifted his own gun a little higher.

“You got to them,” Waverill said
flatly.

“The ones that did the remodel-
ing job on this crate and hid that
gun for you? Of course. Did you
think vou were playing with an
idiot?”

“1 could have sworn they were
beyond reach.”

“I reached them.” Murdoch got
unstrapped and stood up. He had
the ship’s acceleration just as he
wanted it “And naturally I went
over the ship while you were blind.

Get into your suit now, Waverill.”
“Why?”

“I’m giving you a better break
than you were going to give me.
I’m putting you where the Patrol
will pick you up.”

“You won’t make it, you son of
a bitch. I’ve got some cards left.” ]
“I know where you planned to |
rendezvous. By the time you buy I
your way out of jail. I’ll be out
of your reach.”

“You never will.”

“Talk hard enough and I may
decide to kill you right now.”
Waverill studied his face for a
moment, then slowly got to his
feet. He went to the suit locker,
got out his suit, and squirmed into
it. Murdoch grinned as he saw the
disappointment on the other’s face.
The weapons were gone from the
suit, too.

He said, “Zip up and get the
helmet on, and get into the lock.”
Waverill, face contorted with
hate, complied slowly. Murdoch
secured the inner hatch behind the
man, then got on the ship’s inter-
com. “Now, Waverill, you’ll notice
it’s too far for a jump back to
Ganymede. I’m going to spend
about forty minutes getting into an
orbit that’ll give you a good chance.
When 1 say shove off, you can
either do it or stay where you are.
If you stay, we’ll be headed a dif-
ferent direction and I’ll have to kill
you for my own safety.” He left
the circuit open, and activated a
spy cell so he could see into the
lock. Waverill was leaning against
the inner hatch, conserving what
heat he could.

IV

M urdoch set up a quick flight
program, waited a minute
to get farther from Ganymede
and the aliens, then turned on
a radar search and set the alarm.
He unzipped his left shoe, got it
off and stood staring at it for a
moment, almost afraid to turn it
over.

Then he turned it slowly. There
was a sticky spot on the sole.

The muscles around his middle
got so taut they ached. He hurried
to the ship’s med cabinet, chose a
certain package of bandages and
tore it open with unsteady fingers.
There was a small vial hidden
there. He unstoppered it and pour-
ed the contents onto the shoe sole.

He let it soak while he checked
the pilot panel, then hurried back.
With a probe, he mulled the liquid
around on the shoe sole and waited
a minute longer. Then he scraped
all he could back into the vial and
looked at it. There were a few bits
of shoe sole in it, but none big
enough to worry him. He got out
a hypodermic and drew some of
the fluid into it. The needle plugged.
He swore, ejected a little to clear
it and drew in some more.

When he had his left sleeve
pushed up, he looked at the vein
in the bend of his elbow for a little
while, then he took a deep breath
and plunged the needle in. He hit
it the first time. He was very care-
ful not to get any air into the vein.

He sighed, put the rest of the
fluid back in the vial and stoppered
it, and cleaned out the needle. Then

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 79
he put a small bandage on his arm
and went back to the pilot’s seat.
He felt tired now that it was done.

The scan showed nothing dan-
gerous. Waverill hadn’t moved.
Murdoch opened his mouth to
speak to him, then decided not to.
He flexed his arm and found it
barely sore, then went over his
flight program again. He made a
small adjustment. The acceleration
was just over one G, and it made
him a little dizzy. He wondered if
he could risk a drink. It hadn’t hurt
Waverill. He went to the small sink
and cabinet that served as a galley,
poured out a stiff shot into a glass,
and mixed it with condensed milk.
He took it back to the pilot’s seat,
not bothering with the free-fall cap,
and drank it slowly.

It was nearly time to unload
Waverill.

He checked course again, then
thumbed the mike. “All right, Wav-
erill. Get going. You should be
picked up within nine or ten hours.”

Waverill didn’t answer, but the
panel lights showed the outer hatch
activated. Through the spy cell
Murdoch could see the stars as the
hatch slowly opened. Waverill
jumped off without hesitating. Mur-
doch liked the tough old man’s guts,
and hoped he’d make it all right.

H e closed the hatch and fed
new data into the autopilot.
He sagged into the seat as the ship
strained into a new course, then it
eased off to a steady forward ac-
celeration. He was ready to loop
around another of Jupiter’s moons,
then around the giant planet itself,

80 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
on a course that should defy pur-
suit unless it were previously known.

He flexed his arm. It was a little
sorer now. He wondered when the
drowsiness would hit him. He didn’t
want to trust the autopilot until he
was safely past Jupiter; if a meteor
or a derelict got in the way, it might
take human wits to set up a new
course safely.

He had all the radar units on
now. The conic sweep forward
showed the great bulge of Jupiter
at one side; no blips in space. The
three Plan Position screens, revolv-
ing through cross-sections of the
sphere of space around him, wink-
ed and faded with blips but none
near the center. He thought. I’ve
made it. I’ve gotten away with it,
and I ought to feel excited. Instead,
he was only tired. He thought. I’ll
get up and fill a thermos with cof-
fee, then I can sit here.

He unstrapped and began to rise.
Then his eyes returned to one of
the scopes.

This particular one was seldom
used in space; it was for planet
landings. It scanned ahead in a nar-
row horizontal band, like a sea ves-
sel’s surface sweep. He’d planned
only to use it as he transited Jupi-
ter, to cut his course in near to the
atmosphere, and it was only habit
that had made him glance at it.
The bright green line showed no
peaks, but at the middle, and for
a little way to each side, it was very
slightly uneven.

He thought, It’s just something in
the system, out of adjustment. He
looked at the forward sweep. There
were no blips dead ahead. He

moved the adjustments of the hori-
zontal sweep, blurred the line, then
brought it back to sharpness. Ex-
cept in the middle. The blurriness
there remained.

He opened a panel and punched
automatic cross-checks, got a re-
port that the instrument was in
perfect order. He looked at the
scope again. The blurred length had
grown to either side. Clammy sweat
began to form on his skin. He
punched at the computers, set up
a program that would curve the
ship off its path, punched for
safety verification, and activated
the autopilot. He heard the drive’s
whine move higher, but felt no an-
swering lateral acceleration. He
punched for three G deceleration,
working frantically to get strapped
in. The drive shrieked but there
was no tug at his body.

The blurred part of the green
line was spreading.

He realized he was pressing
against the side of his seat. That
meant the ship was finally swerv-
ing. But he’d erased that program.
And now, abruptly, deceleration hit
him. He sagged forward against his
straps, gasping for air. He heard
a new whine as his seat automa-
tically began to turn, pulling in the
straps on one side, as it maneuvered
to face him away from the decelera-
tion. He was crushed sideways for
a while, then the seat locked and
he pressed hard against the back
of it. This he could take, though
he judged it was five or six G’s. He
labored for breath.

The deceleration cut off and he
was in free fall. His screens and

scopes were dark. The drive no
longer whined. He thought, Some-
thing’s got me. Something that can
hide from radar, and control a ship
from a distance like a fish on the
end of a spear.

He tore at the straps, got free
and leaped for the suit locker. He
dressed in frantic haste, cycled the
air lock . . . and found himself on
the surface of a planet.

He had been returned to Gany-
mede.

Panicked, he fled; then abruptly,
where nothing had been, there was
something solid in his path. He
turned his face to avoid the impact
and tried to get his arms in front
of him. He crashed into something
that did not yield. His arms slid
around something, and without
opening his eyes he knew the robot
had him. He tried to fight, but his
strength was pitiful. He relaxed
and tried to think.

In his suit helmet radio the voice
of the robot said, “We will put you
to sleep now.”

He fought frantically to break
loose. His mind screamed, Nol If
you go to sleep now you’ll never. . .

e was wrong.

His first waking sensation
was delicious comfort. He felt good
all over. He came a little more
awake and his spaceman’s mind be-
gan to reason: There’s light gravity,
and I’m supported by the armpits.
No acceleration. I’m breathing
something heavier than air, but it
feels good in my lungs, and tastes
good.

His eyelids unlocked themselves.

A GUEST OF GANYMEDE 81
and the shock of seeing was like a
knife in his middle.

He was buried in the ice, looking
out at the place where he and Wav-
erill had stayed. He was far into
the ice and could only see distort-
edly. Between him and the open
were various things; rocks, eroded
artifacts. At the edge of his vision
on the right was a vaguely animal
shape.

Terror made him struggle to turn
his head. He couldn’t; he was en-
cased in something just tight enough
to hold him. His nose and mouth
were free, and a draft of the cloy-
ing atmosphere moved past them
so that he could breath. There was
enough space before his eyes for
him to see the stuff swirling like a
heavy fog. He thought. I’m being
fed by what I breathe. I don’t feel
hungry. In horror, he forced the
stuff out of his lungs. It was hard
to exhale. He resisted taking any
back in, but eventually he had to
give up and then he fought to get
it in. He tried to cry out, but the
sound was a muffled nothing.

He yielded to panic and struggled
for a while without accomplishing
anything, except that he found that
his casing did yield, very slowly, if
he applied pressure long enough.
That brought a little sanity, and he
relaxed again until the exhaustion
wore off.

There was movement in the
vague shape at his right, and he
felt a compulsion to see it more
plainly. Even after it was in his
vision, horrified fascination kept
him straining until his head was
turned toward it.

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82 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

It was alive; obscenely alive, a
caricature of parts of a man. There
was no proper skin, but an ugly
translucent membrane covered it.
The whole was encased as Mur-
doch himself must be, and from
the casing several pipes stretched
back into the dark ice. The legs
were entirely gone, and only stubs
of arms remained, sufficient for the
thing to hang from in its casing.
Bloated lungs pulsed slowly, breath-
ing in and out a misty something
like what Murdoch breathed. The
stomach was shrunken to a small
repugnant sack, hanging at the bot-
tom with what might be things
evolved from liver and kidneys.
Blood moved from the lungs
through the loathsome mess, pump-
ed by an overgrown heart that pro-
truded from between the lungs A
little blood circulated up to what
had once been the head. The skull
was gone. The nose and mouth
were one round hole where the nu-
trient vapor puffed in and out. The
brain showed horrible and shrunk
through the membrane. A pair of
lidless idiot eyes stared unmovingly
in Murdoch’s direction. The whole
jawless head was the size of Mur-
doch’s two fists doubled up, if he

could judge the size through the dis-
tortion of the ice.

S ick but unable to vomit, Mur-
doch forced his eyes away
from the thing. Now the aliens
spoke to him, from somewhere.
“Pretty isn’t he Murdoch. He makes
a good bank for the virus. You
were right you know it does offer
great longevity but it has its own
ideas of what a host should be.”
Murdoch produced a garbled
sound and the aliens spoke again.
“Your words are indistinct but per-
haps you are asking how long it
took him to become this way. He
was one- of our first visitors the
very first who tried to steal from
us. His plan was not as clever as
your own which we found diverting
though of course you had no
chance against our science which is
beyond your understanding.” And,
in answer to his moan, they said,
“Do not be unphilosophical Mur-
doch you will find many thoughts
to occupy your time.”

I’ll go mad, he thought. That’s
the way out!

But he doubted that even the
escape of madness would be al-
lowed. END

Worlds of Tomorrow • Novelette

THE

TOTALLY RICH

BY JOHN BRUNNER

Illustrated by Finlay

Incredibly rich and powerfui,

. they iack nothing — except a
reason to go on with living!

The hammer keeps ringing on
somebody’s coffin!

The hammer keeps ringing on
somebody’s coffin!

The hammer keeps ringing on
somebody’s coffin —

Way over in the new burying
ground!

I

T hey are the totally rich. You’ve
never heard of them be-
cause they are the only people
in the world rich enough to buy
what they want: a completely pri-
vate life. The lightning can strike
into your life and mine — you win
a big prize, or find yourself neigh-
bor to an axe-murderer, or buy a

parrot suffering from psittacosis —
and you are in the searchlight,
blinking shyly and wishing to God
you were dead.

They won their prizes by being
born. They do not have neighbors.
If they require a murder they do
not use so clumsy a means as an
axe. They do not keep parrots.
And if by some other million-to-
one chance the searchlight does
tend toward them, they buy it
and instruct the man behind it to
switch it off.

How many of them there are,
1 don’t know. I have tried to estimate
the total by adding together the gross
national product of every country on
Earth and dividing by the amount
necessary to buy a government of a

THE TOTALLY RICH 83

84 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

major industrial power. It goes
without saying that you cannot
maintain privacy unless you can
buy any two governments.

I think there may be one hun-
dred of these people. 1 have met
one, and very nearly another.

By and large, they are night
people. The purchase of light from
darkness was the first economic ad-
vance. But you will not find them
by going and looking at two o’clock
in 'the morning, any more than at
two in the afternoon. Not at the
approved clubs; not at the polo-
grounds; not in the Royal Enclo-
sure at Ascot or on the White
House lawn.

They are not on maps. Do you
understand that? Literally, where
they choose to live becomes a blank
space in the atlases. They are not
in census lists, Who’s Who or
Burke’s Peerage. They do not fig-
ure in tax-collectors’ files and the
Post Office has no record of their
addresses. Think of all the places
where your name appears — the
yellowing school-registers, the hos-
pital case-records, the duplicate re-
ceipt form in the store, the signa-
ture on letters. In no single such
place is there one of their names.

How it is done . . . no, I don’t
know. I can only hazard a guess
that to almost all human beings the
promise of having more than every-
thing they have ever conceived as
desirable acts like a traumatic
shock. It is instantaneous brain-
washing; in the moment the prom-
ise is believed, the pattern of obe-
dience is imprinted, as the psychol-
ogists say.

THE TOTALLY RICH 85
But they take no chances. They
are not absolute rulers. Indeed, they
are not rulers of anything except
what directly belongs to them. But
they have much in common with
that Caliph of Baghdad to whom
a sculptor came, commissioned to
make a fountain. This fountain
was the most beautiful in the world,
and the Caliph approved it. Then
he demanded of the sculptor wheth-
er anyone else could have made so
lovely a fountain, and the sculptor
proudly said no one but he in the
whole world could have achieved
it.

Pay him what was promised,
said the Caliph. And also — put
out his eyes.

I wanted champagne that evening,
dancing girls, bright lights, mu-
sic. All I had was a can of
beer, but at least it was cold.
I went to fetch it, and when I came
back stood in the kitchen doorway
looking at my ... living room,
workshop, lab, whatever. It was a
bit of all these.

All right, I didn’t believe it. It
was the 23rd of August and I had
been here one year and one month,
and the job was done. I didn’t be-
lieve it, and I wouldn’t be able to
until I’d told people — called in
my friends and handed the beer
around and made them drink a
toast.

I raised the can. I said, “To the
end of the job!” 1 drank.

That hadn’t turned the trick. I
said, “To the Cooper Effect!” That
was a little more like it, but it still
wasn’t quite complete.

86 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

So I frowned for a moment,
thought I’d got it and said trium-
phantly, “To Santadora — the most
wonderful place on Earth, without
which such concentration would
never have been possible. May
God bless her and all who sail from
her.”

I was drinking this third toast
with a sense of satisfaction when
Naomi spoke from the shadows of
the open porch.

“Drink to me, Derek,” she said.
“You’re coming closer, but you
aren’t quite there.”

I slammed the beer-can down on
a handy table, strode across the
room and gave her a hug.

She didn’t respond. She was like
a beautiful doll displaying Paris
creations in a store window. I had
never seen her wearing anything
but black, and tonight it was a
black blouse of handspun raw silk
and tight black pants tapering down
to black espadrilles. Her hair, corn-
pale, her eyes, sapphire-blue, her
skin, luminous under a glowing tan,
had always been so perfect they
seemed unreal. I had never touched
her before. Sometimes, lying awake
at night, I had wondered why. She
had no man. I had rationalized to
myself that I prized this haven of
peace, and the concentration I here
found possible, too much to want
to Involve myself with a woman
who never demanded anything but
who — one knew it — would take
nothing less than everything.

“It’s done,” I said, whirling and
throwing out my arm. “The milen-
nium has arrived! Success at last!”
I ran to the haywire machine which

I had never thought to see in real
existence. “This calls for celebra-
tion — I’m going out to collect
everyone I can find and. . .”

I heard my voice tail away. She
had walked a pace forward, and
lifted a hand that had been hanging
by her side, weighed down by some-
thing. Now it caught the light. A
bottle of champagne.

“How — ?” I said. And thought
of something else, too. I had never
been alone with Naomi before, in
the thirteen months since coming
to Santadora.

“Sit down, Derek,” she said. She
put the champagne bottle on the
same table as the beer-can. “It’s no
good going out to collect anyone.
There isn’t anybody here except us.”

I didn’t say anything.

She cocked a quizzical eyebrow.
“You don’t believe me? You will.”

Turning, she went to the kitch-
en. I waited for her to return with
a pair of the glasses I kept for
company. I was leaning forward
with my hands on the back of a
chair, and it suddenly seemed to
me that I had subconsciously in-
tended to put the chair between
myself and this improbable stran-
ger.

Dexterously she untwisted the
wire of the champagne bottle,
caught the froth which followed
the cork in the first glass, poured
the second and held it out to me.
I came, moving like a stupid, stolid
animal, to take hold of it.

“Sit down,” she said again.

“But — where is everybody else?
Where’s 'Tim? Where are Conrad
and Ella? Where — ?”

“They’ve gone,” she said. She
came, carrying her glass, to sit fac-
ing me in the only other chair not
cluttered with broken bits of my
equipment. “They went about an
hour ago.”

“But — Pedro! And — !”

“They put out to sea. They are
going somewhere else.” She made
a casual gesture. “I don’t know
where that is. But they are provided
for.”

Raising her champagne, she add-
ed, “To you, Derek — and my
compliments. I was never sure that
you would do it, but it had to be
tried.”

I ran to the window which over-
looked the sea, threw it open and
stared out into the gathering dark.
I could see four or five fishing-
boats, their riding lights like shift-
ing stars, moving out of the harbor.
On the quay was a collection of
abandoned furniture and some fish-
ermen’s gear. It did look as though
they were making a permanent de-
parture.

“Derek, sit down,” Naomi said
for the third time. “We’re wasting
time, and besides your wine is get-
ting flat.”

“But how can they bring them-
selves to — ?”

“Abandon their ancestral homes,
dig up their roots, leave for fresh
woods and pastures new?” Her tone
was light and mocking. “They are
doing nothing of the kind They
have no special attachment to San-
tadora. Santadora does not exist.
Santador was built eighteen months
ago, and will be torn down next
month.”

THE TOTALIY RICH 87

I said after an eternal silence,
“Naomi, are you — are you
feeling quite well?”

“I feel wonderful.” She smiled.
The light glistened on her white
teeth. “Moreover, the fishermen
were not fishermen and Father
Francisco is not a priest and Con-
rad and Ella are not artists except
in a very small way of business,
as a hobby. Also my name is not
Naomi. But since you’re used to it
— and so am I — it’ll serve.”
Now I had to drink the cham-
pagne. It was superb. It was the
most perfect wine I had ever
tasted. I was sorry not to be in
the mood to appreciate the fact.

“Are you making out that this
entire village is a sham?” I de-
manded. “A sort of colossal —
what? Movie set?”

“In a way. A stage setting would
be a more accurate term. Go out
on the porch and reach up to the
fretted decoration overhanging the
step. Pull it hard. It will come
away. Look at what you find on
the exposed surface. Do the same
to any other house in the village
which has a similar porch — there
are five of them. Then come back
and we can talk seriously.”

She crossed her exquisite legs
and sipped her champagne. She
knew beyond doubt that I was go-
ing to do precisely as she said
Determinedly, though more to
prevent myself feeling foolish than
for any better reason, I went on
to the porch. 1 put on the light —
a swinging yellow bulb, on a sup-
port tacked amateurishly into place.
— and looked up at the fretted

88 WORLDS OF TOMORROW •
decoration on the edge of the over-
hang. The summer insects came
buzzing in towards the attractive
lamp.

I tugged at the piece of wood.

It came away. Holding it to the
light, I read on the exposed sur-
face, stamped in pale blue ink:
"1^ ombre 14,006 — Jose Barcos,
Barcelona.”

I had no ready-made reaction.
Accordingly, holding the piece of
wood like a talisman in front of
me, I went back indoors and stood
over Naomi in her chair. I was
preparing to phrase some angry
comment, but I never knew what
it was to be, for at that moment
my eye was caught by the label on
the bottle. It was not champagne.
The name of the firm was un-
known to me.

“It is the best sparkling wine in
the world,” Naomi said. She had
followed my gaze. “There is enough
for about — oh — one dozen
bottles a year.”

My palate told me there was
some truth at least in what she
said. 1 made my way dizzily to my
chair and sank into it at last. I
said, “I don’t pretend to under-
stand this. I — I haven’t spent the
last year in a place that doesn’t
exist!”

“But you have.” Quite cool, she
cradled her glass between her beau-
tiful slim hands and set her elbows
on the sides of the dirty chair. “By
the way, have you noticed that
there are never any mosquitoes
among the insects that come to
your lights? It was barely likely
that you would have caught ma-

laria, but the chance had to be
guarded against.”

I started. More than once I’d
jokingly commented to Tim Hanni-
gan that one of Santadora’s greatest
advantages was its freedom from
mosquitoes. . .

“Good. The facts are beginning
to make an impression on you. Cast
your mind back now to the winter
before last. Do you recall making
the acquaintance of a man going
under the name of Roger Gurney,
whom you subsequently met one
other time?”

I nodded. Of course I remem-
bered Roger Gurney. Often, since
coming to Santadora, I’d thought
that that first meeting with him
had been one of the two crucial
events which changed my life.

“You gave Gurney a lift one
rather unpleasant November night.
His car had broken down and
there was no hope of getting a
necessary spare part before the
morning, and he had to be in Lon-
don for an urgent appointment at
ten next day. You found him very
congenial and charming. You put
him up in your flat; you had dinner
together and talked until four a.m.
about what h9s now taken concrete
forrfrhere in this room. You talked
about the Cooper Effect.”

1 felt incredibly cold, as though
a finger of that bleak November
night had reached through the win-
dow and traced a cold smear down
my spine. I said, “Then, that very
night, I mentioned to him that I
only saw one way of doing the
necessary experiments. I said I’d
have to find a village somewhere,

without outside distractions, with
no telephone or newspapers, with-
out even a radio. A place where
living was so cheap that I could
devote myself for two or three
years to my work, and not have to
worry about earning my living.”

My God! I put my hand to my
forehead. It was as if memory was
re-emerging like invisible ink ex-
posed to a fire.

“That’s right.” Naomi nodded
with an air of satisfaction. “And
the second and only other time you
met this delightful Roger Gurney
was the weekend you were cele-
brating your small win on the foot-
ball pools. Two thousand one hun-
dred and four pounds, seventeen
shillings and a penny. And he told
you of a certain small Spanish vil-
lage, named Santadora, where the
conditions for your research were
perfectly fulfilled. He said he had
visited some friends here, named
Conrad and Ella Williams. The pos-
sibility of turning your dreams into
facts had barely occurred to you,
but by the time you’d had a few
drinks with Gurney, it seemed
strange that you hadn’t already laid
your plans.”

1 slammed my glass down so
hard it might have broken. I
said harshly, “Who are you? What
game are you playing with me?”
“No — game, Derek.” She was
leaning forward now, her blue
jewel-hard eyes fixed on my face.
“A very serious business. And one
in which you also have a stake.
Can you honestly say that but for
meeting Roger Gurney, but for

THE TOTALLY RICH 89
winning this moderate sum of mon-
ey, you would be here — or any-
where — with the Cooper Effect
translated into reality?”

I said after a long moment in
which I reviewed one whole year
of my life, “No. No, I must be
honest. I can’t.”

“Then there’s your answer.” She
laid her glass on the table and took
out from the pocket of her tight
pants a small cigarette-case. “I am
the only person in the world who
wanted to have and use the Cooper
effect enough to bring it about. Not
even Derek Cooper. Take one of
these cigarettes.”

She held out the case; the mere
opening of it had filled the air with
a fragrance I found startling. There
was no name on the cigarette I
took, the only clue to its origin be-
ing a faint striping of the paper,
but when I drew the first smoke
I knew that this, like the wine, was
the best in the world.

She watched my reaction with
amusement. I relaxed fractionally.
How many times had I seen her
smile like that, here, or much more
often at Tim’s, or at Conrad’s.

“I wanted the Cooper Effect,”
she repeated. “And now I’ve got it.”
I said, “Just a moment! I — ”
“Then I want to rent it.” She
shrugged. It didn’t matter. “After
I’ve rented it, it is and will be for-
ever yours. You have conceded
yourself that but for • — certain key
interventions, let’s call them — but
for me, it would be a mere theory.
An intellectual toy. I will not, even
so, ask you to consider that a fair
rental for it. For the use of your

90 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
machine for one very specific pur-
pose, I will pay you so much that
for the rest of your life you may
have anything at all your fancy
turns to. Here!”

She tossed something — I didn’t
know where she had been hiding
it — and I caught it reflexively.
It was a long narrow wallet of soft,
supple leather, zipped around the
edge.

“Open it.”

I obeyed. Inside I discovered one
— two — three credit cards made
out in my name, and a check-book
with my name printed ready on
the checks. On each of the cards
there was something I had never
seen before; a single word over-
printed in red. The word was UN-
LIMITED.

I put them back in the wallet.
It had occurred to me to doubt
that what she said was true, but
the doubt had faded at once. Yes,
Santadora had been created in or-
der to permit me to work under
ideal conditions. Yes, she had done
it. After what she had said about
Roger Gurney, I didn’t have room
to disbelieve.

Consequently I could go to Ma-
drid, walk into a salesroom and
come out driving a Rolls-Royce; in
it, I could drive to a bank and
write the sum of one million pesetas
on the first of those checks and
receive it — if the bank had that
much in cash.

, Still looking at the wallet, zipping
and unzipping it mechanically, I
said, “All right. You’re the person
who wanted the Effect. Who are
you?”

“The person who could get it.”
She gave a little dry laugh and
shook her head. Her hair waved
around her face like wings. “Don’t
trouble me with more inquiries,
Derek. I won’t answer them be-
cause the answers would mean
nothing.”

I was silent for a little while.
Then, finally, because I had no
other comment to make, I said, “At
least you must say why you wanted
what I could give you. After all.
I’m still the only person in the
world who understands it.”

“Yes.” She studied me. “Yes, that
is true. Pour more wine for us; I
think you like it.”

While I was doing so, and while
I was feeling my body grow calm
after the shock and storm of the
past ten minutes, she said, looking
at the air, “You are unique, you
know. A genius without equal in
your single field. That’s why you’re
here, why I went to a little trouble
for you. I can get everything I
want, but for certain things I’m in-
evitably dependent on the one per-
son who can provide them.”

Her eyes roved to my new, ram-
shackle — but functioning — ma-
chine.

“I wanted that machine to get
me back a man,” she said. “He has
been dead for three years.”

II

T he world seemed to stop in
its tracks. I had been blind
ever since the vision of unlimited
money dazzled me. I had accepted
that, because Naomi could get

everything, she knew what it was
she was getting.

And, of course, she didn’t.

A little imaginary pageant play-
ed itself out in my mind, in which
faceless dolls moved in a world of
shifting, rosy clouds. A doll clothed
in black, with long pale hair, said,
“He’s dead. I want him back. Don’t
argue. Find me a way.”

The other dolls bowed and went
away. Eventually one doll came
back and said, “There is a man
called Derek Cooper who has some
unorthodox ideas. Nobody else in
all the world is thinking about this
problem at all.”

“See that he gets what he needs,”
said the doll with pale hair.

I put down the bottle of wine.
I hesitated — yes, I still did, I was
still dazzled. But then I took up
the soft leather wallet and tossed
it into Naomi’s lap. I said, “You’ve
cheated yourself.”

“What?” She didn’t believe it.
The wallet which had fallen in her
lap was an apparition. She did not
move to pick it up, as though touch-
ing it would make it real.

I said, very thoughtfully because
1 was working out in my mind
how it must be, “You talked about
wanting my machine for a particu-
lar job. I was too dazed to wonder
what the job might be. There are
jobs which can be done with it, so
I let it slide by. You are very rich,
Naomi. You have been so rich all
your life that you don’t know
about the one other thing that
stands between the formulation of
a problem and its solution. That’s
time, Naomi!”

THE TOTALLY RICH 91

I tapped the top of the machine.
I was still proud of it. I had every
right to be.

“You are like — like an empress
of ancient China. Maybe she exist-
ed, I don’t know. Imagine that one
day she said, ‘It lias been revealed
to me that my ancestors dwell in
the moon. I wish to go there and
pay the respects of a dutiful daugh-
ter. Find me a way.’ So they
hunted through the length and
breadth of the empire, and one day
a courtier came in with a poor and
ragged man, and said to the em-
press, ‘This man has invented a
rocket.’

“ ‘Good,’ said the empress. ‘Per-
fect it so that I may go to the
moon.’ ”

I had intended to tell the fable
in a bantering tone — to laugh at
the end of it. But I turned to glance
at Naomi, and my laughter died.

Her face was as pale and still
as a marble statue’s, her lips a
little parted, her eyes wide. On one
cheek, like a diamond, glittered a
tear.

A ll my levity evaporated. I
had the sudden horrible im-
pression that I had kicked at what
seemed a stone and shattered a
priceless bowl.

“No, Derek,” she said after a
while. “You don’t have to tell me
about time.” She stirred, half turn-
ed in her chair, looked at the table
beside her. “Is this glass mine?” she
added in a lighter tone, putting out
her slim and beautiful hand to
point. She did not wipe the tear. It
remained on her cheek for some

92 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

time, until the hot dry air of the

night kissed it away.

Taking the glass at my nod, she
stood up and came across to look
at my machine. She regarded it
without comment, then said, “I
hadn’t meant to tell you what I
wanted. Time drove me to it.”

She drank deeply. “Now,” she
went on, “I want to know exactly
what your pilot model can do.”

I hesitated. So much of it was
not yet in words. I had kept my
word-thinking separate from my
work-thinking all during the past
year, and lately 1 had talked of
nothing except commonplaces when
I relaxed in the company of my
friends. The closer I came to suc-
cess, the more superstitious I had
grown about mentioning the pur-
pose of this project.

And — height of absurdity —
now that I knew what she wanted,
1 was faintly ashamed that my tri-
umph reduced on close examina-
tion to such a little thing.

Sensing my mood, she glanced
at me and gave a faint smile. “ ‘Yes,
Mr Faraday’ — or was it Hum-
phrey Davy? — ‘but what is it
!>ood for?’ I’m sorry.”

A new-born baby. Well enough.
Somehow the phrase hit me —
reached me emotionally — and 1
was suddenly not ashamed at all
of anything. I was as proud as any
father and much more so.

1 pushed aside a stack of rough
schematics on the corner of the
desk. 1 held my glass, and it was
so quiet I fancied I could hear the
bubbles bursting as they surfaced
in the wine.

I said, “It wasn’t putting money
in my way, or anything like that,
which I owe you a debt of grati-
tude for. It was sending that per-
suasive and charming Roger Gur-
ney after me. I had never met any-
one else who was prepared to take
my ideas except as an amusing
talking-point. I’d kicked the con-
cept around with some of the finest
intellects I know. People I knew
at university, for instance, who’ve
left me a long way behind since
then.” I hadn’t thought of this be-
fore. I hadn’t thought of a lot of
things, apparently.

“But he could talk them real.
What I said to him was much the
same as what I’d said to others be-
fore then. I’d talked about the —
the space a living organism defines
around itself, by behaving as it
does. A mobile does it. That’s why
1 have one over there.” I pointed,
raising my arm, and as though by
command a breeze came through
the open window and stirred hang-
ing metal panels in the half-shad-
owed far corner of the room. They
squeaked a little as they turned.
I’d been too busy to drop oil on the
bearings lately.

I was frowning, and the frown
was knotting my forehead muscles,
and it was going to make my head
ache, but I couldn’t prevent myself.

“There must be a total interre-
lationship between the organism
and its environment, including espe-
cially its fellow-organisms. Self-
recognition was one of the first
things they stumbled across in
building mechanical simulacra of
living creatures. They didn’t plan

for it. They built mechanical tor-
toises with little lights on top and
a simple light-seeking urge, and if
you showed this beast to a mirror,
it would seem to recognize itself. . .
This is the path, not the deliberate
step-by-step piecing together of a
man, but the attempt to define the
same shape as that which the man
himself defines in reacting with
other people.

“Plain enough, that. But are you
to process a trillion bits of infor-
mation, store them, label them in
time, translate them back for re-
production as — well, as what? I
can’t think of anything. What you
want is. . .”

I shrugged, emptied my glass,
and stood up. “You want the Coop-
er Effect,” I finished. “Here — take
this.,”

F rom the little rack on top of
my machine I took a flat
translucent disk about the size of a
penny. To handle it I used a key
which plugged into a hole in the
center so accurately that it held the
weight by simple friction. I held
it out to Naomi.

My voice shook, because this
was the first random test I had
ever made.

“Take hold of this. Handle it.
Rub your fingers over it, squeeze
it gently on the flat sides, close
your hand on it.”

She obeyed. While it was in her
hand, she looked at me.

“What is it?”

“It’s an artificial piezo-electric
crystal. All right, that should be
enough. Put it back on the key —

THE TOTAtlY RICH 93
I don’t want to confuse the read-
ings by touching it myself.”

It wasn’t easy to slip the disk
back on the key, and she made two
false attempts before catching my
hand to steady it. I felt a vibration
coming through her fingers, as
though her whole body were singing
like a musical instrument.

“There,” she said neutrally.

I carried the disk back to the
machine. Gingerly I transferred it
from the key to the little post on
the top of the reader. It slid down
like a record dropping to a turn-
table. A moment or two during
which I didn’t breathe.

Then there was the reaction.

I studied the readings on the
dials carefully. Not perfect. I was
a little disappointed — I’d hoped
for a perfect run this first time.
Nonetheless, it was extraordinarily
close, considering she had handled
the disk for a bare ten seconds.

I said, “The machine tells me
that you are female, slim, fair-
haired and probably blue-eyed, po-
tentially artistic, unaccustomed to
manual labor, IQ in the range
of — ”

Her voice cut across mine like
the lash of a whip. “How? How
do I know the machine tells you
this, not your own eyes?”

I didn’t look up. I said, “The
machine is telling me what changes
were brought about in that little
crystal disk when you touched it.
I’m reading it as a kind of graph,
if you like — looking across the
pattern of the dials and interpret-
ing them into words.”

“Does it tell you anything else?”

94 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“Yes. But it must be in error
somewhere. I’m afraid. The cali-
bration has been rather makeshift,
and would have to be completed
with a proper statistical sample of
say a thousand people from all
walks of life.” I forced a laugh as
I turned away from the machine.
“You see, it says that you’re forty-
eight to fifty years old, and this
is ridiculous on the face of it.”

She sat very still. I had moved
all the way to the table beside her,
intending to refill my glass, before
I realized how still. My hand on
the bottle’s neck, I stared at her.
“Is something wrong?”

She shook herself and came
back to life instantly. She said
lightly, “No. No, nothing at all.
Derek, you are the most amazing
man in the world. I shall be fifty
years old next week.”

“You’re — joking.” I licked my
lips. I’d have said ... oh, thirty-
five and childless, and extremely
careful of her looks. But not a day
more.

A trace of bitterness crossed her
face as she nodded.

“It’s true. I wanted to be beau-
tiful — I don’t think I have to ex-
plain why. 1 wanted to go on being
beautiful because it was the only
gift 1 could give to someone who
had. as I have, everything he could
conceivably want. So I — I saw to
it.”

“What happened to him?”

“1 would prefer you not to know.”
The answer was cool and final.
She relaxed deliberately, stretching
her legs out before her, and gave
a lazy smile. Her foot touched

something on the floor as she
moved, and she glanced down.

“What — ? Oh, that!” She
reached for the soft leather wallet,
which had fallen from her lap when
she stood up, after I tossed it back
at her. Holding it out, she said,
“Take it, Derek. I know you’ve al-
ready earned it. By accident — by
mistake — whatever you call it,
you’ve proved that you can do
what I was hoping for.”

I did take it. But I didn’t pock-
et it at first; I kept it in my
hands, absently turning it over.

I said, “I’m not so sure, Naomi.
Listen.” I picked up my newly
filled glass and returned to the
chair facing her. “What I ultimate-
ly envisage is being able to deduce
the individual from the traces he
makes. You know that. That was
the dream I told to Roger Gurney.
But between now and then, be-
tween the simple superficial analy-
sis of a specially prepared material
and going over, piece by piece, ten
thousand objects affected not mere-
ly by the individual in question but
by many others, some of whom
probably cannot be found in order
to identify and rule out their ex-
traneous influence — and then pro- ]
cessing the results to make a co- ,
herent whole, there may be years. |
decades, of work and study, a ;
thousand false trails, a thousand
preliminary experiments with ani-
mals Whole new techniques will ;
have to be invented in order to
employ the data produced! Assum- '
ing you have your — your analogue
of a man: what are you going to

do with it? Are you going to try
and make a man, artificially, that
fits the specifications?”

“Yes.”

The simple word left me literally
gasping; it was like a blow to the
stomach, driving my breath away.
She bent her brilliant gaze on me
and once more smiled faintly.

“Don’t worry, Derek. That’s not
your job. Work has been going on
in many places for a long time —
they tell me — on that problem.
What nobody except yourself was
doing was struggling with the prob-
lem of the total person.”

I couldn’t reply. She filled her
own glass again before continuing,
in a tenser voice.

“There’s a question I’ve got to put
to you, Derek. It’s so crucial I’m
afraid to hear the answer. But 1
can’t endure to wait any longer,
either. I want to know how long
you think it will be before 1 can
have what I want. Assume — remem-
ber that you’ve got to assume —
the best men in the world can be
set to work on the subsidiary prob-
lems; they’ll probably make their
reputations, they’ll certainly make
their fortunes. I want to hear what
you think.”

I said thickly, “Well, I find that
pretty difficult! I’ve already men-
tioned the problem of isolating the
traces from — ”

“This man lived a different kind
of existence from you, Derek. If
you’d stop and think for a second,
you’d guess that. I can take you
to a place that was uniquely his,
where his personality formed and
molded and affected every grain of

THE TOTALLY RICH 95
dust. Not a city where a million
people have walked, not a house
where a dozen unknown families
have lived.”

It had to be true, incredible
though I would have thought it a
scant hour ago. I nodded.

“That’s good. Well, I shall also
have to work out ways of handling
unprepared materials — calibrate
the properties of every single sub-
stance. And there’s the risk that
the passage of time will have over-
laid the traces with molecular noise
and random movement. Moreover,
the testing itself, before the actual
readings could register, might dis-
turb the traces.”

“You are to assume — ” she forced
patience on the repetition — “that
the best men in the world are go-
ing to tackle the side issues.”

“It isn’t a side issue, Naomi.” I
wished I didn’t have to be honest.
She was hurt by my insistence, and
I was beginning to think that, for
all the things one might envy her,
she had been hurt very badly al-
ready. “It’s simply a fact one has
to face.”

She drank down her wine and
replaced the glass on the table.
Musingly she said, “I guess it would
be true to say that the — the ob-
ject which a person affects most,
and most directly, is his or her own
body. If just handling your little
disk reveals so much, how much
more must be revealed by the hands
themselves, the lips, the eyes!”

I said uncomfortably, “Yes, of
course. But it’s hardly practicable
to process a human body.”

She said, “I have his body.”

96 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
I]

T his silence was a dreadful
one. A stupid beetle, fat as a
bullet, was battering its head on
the shade of the lamp in the porch,
and other insects were droning too,
and there was the sea distantly
heard. The silence, nonetheless,
was graveyard-deep.

But she went on at last. “Every-
thing that could possibly be pre-
served is preserved, by every means
that could be found. I had — ” Her
voice broke for a second. “I had it
prepared. Only the thing which is
fie, the web in the brain, the little
currents died. Curious that a per-
son is so fragile.’,’ Briskening, she
launched her question anew.
“Derek, how long?”

I bit my lip and stared down at
the floor by my feet. My mind
churned as it considered, discarded
relevant factors, envisaged prob-
lems, assumed them to be soluble,
fined down everything to the sim-
ple irreducible of time. I might
have said ten years, and felt that I
was being stupidly optimistic.

But in the end, I said nothing at
all.

She waited. Then, quite unex-
pectedly she gave a bright laugh and
jumped to her feet. “Derek, it isn’t
fair!” she said. “You’ve achieved
something fantastic, you want and
deserve to relax and celebrate,
and here I am plaguing you with
questions and wanting answers out
of the air. I know perfectly well
that you’re too honest to give me
an estimate without time to think,
maybe do a few calculations. And

I’m keeping you shut up in your
crowded room when probably what
you most want is to get out of it
for a while. Am I right?”

She put her hand out, her arm
quite straight, as if to pull me from
my chair. Her face was alight with
what seemed pure pleasure, and to
see it was to experience again the
shock of hearing her say she was
fifty years old. She looked — • I can
only say transformed. She looked
like a girl at her first party.

But it lasted only a moment,
this transformation. Her expression
became grave and calm. She said,
“I am sorry, Derek. I — I hate
one thing about love. Have you
ever thought how selfish it can
make you?”

W e wandered out of the house
hand in hand, into the
summer dark. There was a narrow
slice of moon and the stars were
like fierce hard lanterns. For the
more-than-hundredth time I walked
down the narrow ill-paved street
leading from my temporary home
towards the harbor; there was Con-
rad’s house, and there was the gro-
cery and wine-shop; there was the
church, its roof silvered by the
moon; there were the little cottages
all in a row facing the sea, where
the families of fisherfolk lived. And
here, abandoned, was the detritus
of two hundred and seventy lives
which had never actually existed —
conjured up to order.

I said, when we had walked all
the way to the quay, “Naomi, it’s
beyond belief, even though I know
it’s true. This village wasn’t a sham.

a showplace. It was real. I know it.”
She looked around her. “Yes. It
was intended to be real. But all it
takes is thought and patience.”
“What did you say? Did you tell

— whoever it was — ‘Go and
build a real village’?”

“I didn’t have to. They knew.
Does it interest you, how it was
done?” She turned a curious face
to me, which I could barely see in
the thin light.

“Of course,” I said. “My God! To
create real people and a real place

— when I’m ordered to re-create
a real person — should I not be
interested?”

“If it were as easy to re-create
as it is to create,” she said emptily,
“I would not be . . . lonely.”

We stopped, close by .the low
stone wall which ran from the quay
to the sharp rocks of the little
headland sheltering the beach, and
leaned on it. At our backs, the row
of little houses; before us, nothing
but the sea. She was resting on
both her elbows, staring over the
water. At less than arm’s reach, 1
leaned on one elbow, my hands
clasped before me, studying her as
though I had never seen her before
tonight. Of course, I hadn’t.

I said, “Are you afraid of not
being beautiful forever?”

She shrugged. “There is no such
wored as ‘forever’ — is there?”
“You make it seem as though
there were.”

“No, no.” She chuckled. “Thank
you for saying it, Derek. Even if
I know — even if I can see in the
mirror — that I am still so, it’s
delightful to be reassured.”

THE TOTALLY RICH 97

How had she achieved it, any-
way? I wanted, and yet didn’t want,
to ask. Perhaps she didn’t know.
She had just said she wanted it so,
and it was. So I asked a different
question.

“Because it’s the thing that is
most yours?”

Her eyes came back from the
sea, rested on me, returned. “Yes.
The only thing that is mine. YouVe
a rare person; you have compas-
sion. Thank you.”

“How do you live?” I said. I
fumbled out cigarettes from my
pocket, rather crumpled. She re-
fused one with a headshake, but I
lit one for myself.

“How do I live?” she echoed. “Oh

— many ways. As various people,
of course, with various names. You
see, I haven’t even a name to call
my own. Two women who look
exactly like me exist for me, so
that when I wish 1 can take their
places in Switzerland, or in Swe-
den or South America. 1 borrow
their lives, use them a while, give
them back. I have seen them grow
old, changed them for replacements

— made into duplicates of me. But
those are not persons, they are
masks. I live behind masks. I sup-
pose that’s what you’d say.”

“You can’t do anything else,” I
said.

“No. No, of course 1 can’t. And
until this overtook me. I’d never
conceived that I might want to.”

I felt that I understood that. I
tapped the first ash off my ciga-
rette down towards the sea. Glanc-
ing around, I said irrelevantly,
“You know, it seems like a shame

98 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
to dismantle Santadora. It could be
a charming little village. A real
one, not a stage set.”

“No,” she said. And then, as she
straightened and whirled around,
“No! Look!” She ran forward into
the middle of the narrow street
and pointed at the cobbles. “Don’t
you see? Already stones which
weren’t cracked, are cracked! And
the houses!” She flung up her arm
and ran forward to the door of the
nearest house. “The wood is warp-
ing! And that shutter — hanging
loose on the hinges! And the step!”
She dropped to her knees, felt
along the low stone step giving di-
rectly on the street.

I was coming after her now,
startled by her passion.

“Feel!” she commanded. “Feel it!
It’s been worn by people walking on
it. And even the wall — don’t you
see the crack from the corner of
the window is getting wider?” Again
she was on her feet, running her
hand over the rough wall. “Time
is gnawing at it, like a dog at a
bone. God, no, Derek! Am I to
leave it and know that time is
breaking it, breaking it, breaking
it?”

I couldn’t find words.

“Listen!” she said. “Oh, God!
Listen!” She had tensed like a
frightened deer, head cocked.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said. I
had to swallow hard.

“Like nails being driven into a
coffin,” she said. She was at the
house-door, battering on it, pushing
at it. “You must hear it!”

Now, I did. From within the
house there was a ticking noise —

a huge, majestic, slow rhythm, so
faint I had not noticed it until she
commanded me to strain my ears.
A clock. Just a clock.

Alarmed at her frenzy, I caught
her by the shoulder. She turned
and clung to me like a tearful child,
burying her head against my chest.
“I can’t stand it,” she said, her teeth
set. I could feel her trembling.

“Come away,” I murmured. “If
it hurts you so much, come away.”

“No, that isn’t what I want. I’d
go on hearing it. Don’t you under-
stand?” She drew back a little and
looked up at me. “I’d go on hear-
ing it!” Her eyes grew veiled, her
whole attention focusing towards
the clock inside the house. “Tick
— tick — tick. It’s like being
buried alive!”

I hesitated a moment. Then 1
said, “All right. I’ll fix it. Stand
back.”

i

1

I

S he obeyed. I raised my foot
and stamped it, sole and heel
together, on the door. Something
cracked. My leg stung all the way
to the thigh with the impact. I did
it again, and the jamb split. The
door flew open. At once the ticking
was loud and clear.

And visible in a shaft of moon-
light opposite the door was the
clock, itself: a tall old grandfather,
bigger than me, its pendulum glint-
ing on every ponderous swing.

A snatch of an ancient and mac-
abre spiritual came to my mind:
The hammer keeps ringing on
somebody's coffin. . .

Abruptly it was as doom-laden
for me as for Naomi. I strode

across the room, tugged open the
glass door of the clock and stopped
the pendulum. The silence was a
relief like cold water after long
thirst.

She came warily into the room
after me, staring at the face of the
clock as though hypnotized. It
struck me that she was not wearing
a watch. I had never seen her wear
one.

“Get rid of it,” she said. She was
still trembling. “Please, Derek, get
rid of it.”

I whistled, taking another look
at the old monster. I said, “That’s
not going to be so easy! These
clocks are heavy!”

‘‘Please, Derek!” The urgency in
her voice was frigbtening. She
turned her back, staring into a cor-
ner of the room. Like ail these
cramped, imitation-antique houses,
this one had a mere three rooms.
The room we were in was crowded
with furniture — a big bed, a
table, chairs, a chest. But for that,
I felt she would have run to the
corner to hide.

Well, I could try.

I studied the problem, and came
to the conclusion that it would be
best to take it in parts.

‘Ts there a lamp?” I said. “Fd
work better if I could see?”

She murmured something inau-
dible; then there was the sound of
a lighter, and a yellow flicker grew
to a steady glow which illumined
the room. The smell of paraffin
reached my nostrils. She put the
lamp on a table where its light fell
past me on to the clock.

I unhitched the weights and

THE TOTALLY RICH 9»
pocketed them. Then I undipped
a screwdriver from my breast pock-
et and attacked the screws at the
corners of the face. As I had
hoped, with those gone it was pos-
sible to lift out the whole works,
the chains following like umbilical
cords, making little scraping sounds
as they were dragged over the
wooden ledge the movement had
rested on.

“Here!” Naomi whispered, and
snatched it from me. It was a sur-
prisingly small proportion of the
weight of the whole clock. She
dashed out of the house and across
the street. A moment, and there
was a splash.

I felt a spasm of regret. And then
was anjgry with myself. Quite likely
this was no rare specimen of antique
craftsmanship, but a fake. Like
the whole village. I hugged the
case to me and began to walk it on
its front corners towards the door.
I had been working with my ciga-
rette in my mouth; now the smoke
began to tease my eyes, and 1 spat
it to the floor and ground it out

S omehow I got the case out of
the house, across the road,
up on the sea-wall. I rested there
for a second, wiping the sweat
from my face, then got behind the
thing and gave it the most violent
push I could manage. It went over
the wall, twisting once in the air,
and splashed.

I looked down, and instantly
wished that I hadn’t. It looked ex-
actly like a dark coffin floating off
into the sea.

But I stayed there for a minute

100 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
or SO, unable to withdraw my gaze,
because of an overwhelming im-
pression that I had done some sym-
bolic act, possessed of a meaning
which could not be defined in logi-
cal terms, yet heavy, solid — real
as that mass of wood drifting away.

I came back slowly, shaking my
head, and found myself in the door
of the house before I paid atten-
tion again to what was before my
eyes. Then I stopped dead, one foot
on the step which Naomi had
cursed for being worn by passing
feet. The flame of the yellow lamp
was wavering a little in the wind.
It was too high. The smell of its
smoke was strong, and the chimney
was darkening.

Slowly, as though relishing each
single movement, Naomi was un-
buttoning the black shirt she wore,
looking toward the lamp. She
tugged it out of the waist of her
pants and slipped it off. The bras-
siere she wore under it was black
too. I saw she had kicked away
her espadrilles.

“Call it an act of defiance,” she
said in a musing tone — speaking
more to herself, I thought, than to
me. “I shall put off my mourning
clothes.” She unzipped her pants
and let them fall. Her briefs also
were black.

“Now I’m through with mourn-
ing. 1 believe it will be done. It will
be done soon enough. Oh, yesl
Soon enough.” Her slim golden
arms reached up behind her back.
She dropped the brassiere to the
floor, but the last garment she
caught up in her hand and hurled
at the wall. For a moment she stood

still; then seemed to become aware
of my presence for the first time
and turned slowly towards me.
“Am I beautiful?” she said.

My throat was very dry. I said,
“You’re the most beautiful woman
I’ve ever seen.”

She leaned over the lamp and
blew it out. In the instant of falling
darkness she said, “Show me.”
And, a little later on the rough
blanket of the bed, when I had said
twice or three times, “Naomi —
Naomi!” she spoke again. Her voice
was cold and far away.

“I didn’t mean to call myself
Naomi. What I had in mind was
Niobe, but I couldn’t remember it.”
And very much later, when she
had drawn herself so close to me
that it seemed she was clinging to
comfort, to existence itself, with
her arms around me and her legs
locked with mine, under the blan-
ket now because the night was cold,
I felt her lips move against my ear.
“How long, Derek?”

I was almost lost; I had never
before been so drained ot myself,
as though I had been cork-tossed
on a stormy ocean and battered
limp by rocks. I could barely open
my eyes. I said in a blurred voice,
“What?”

“How long?”

I fought a last statement from
my wearying mind, neither know-
ing nor caring what it was. “With
luck,” I muttered, “it might not take
ten years. Naomi, I don’t know — ”
And in a burst of absolute effort,
finished, “My God, you do this to
me and expect me to be able to
think afterwards?”

THE TOTALLY RICH 101

IV

B ut that was the extraordinary
thing. I had imagined myself
about to go down into blackness,
into coma, to sleep like a corpse.
Instead, whDe my body rested, my
mind rose to the pitch beyond con-
sciousness — to a vantage pbint where
it could survey the future. I was
aware of the thing I had done. From
my crude experimental machine, I
knew, would come a second and a
third, and the third would be suffi-
cient for the task. I saw and recog-
nized the associated problems, and
knew them to be soluble. I conceived
names of men I wanted to work
on those problems — some who
were known to me, and given the
chance I had been given could
create, in their various fields, such

new techniques as I had done.
Meshing like hand-matched cogs,
the parts blended into the whole.

A calendar and a clock were in
my mind all this while.

Not all of this was a dream.
Much of it was of the nature of in-
spiration, with the sole difference
that I could feel it happening and
that it was right But toward tiie
very end, I did have a dream —
not in visual images, but in a kind
of emotional aura. I had a com-
pletely satisfying sensation, which
derived from the fact that I was
about to meet for the first time a
man who was already my closest
friend, whom I knew as minutely
as any human being had ever
known another.

I was waking. For a little while
longer I wanted to bask in that fan-

102 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
tastic warmth of emotion; 1 strug-
gled not to wake, while feeling that
I was smiling and had been smiling
for so long that my cheek-muscles
were cramped.

Also I had been crying, so that
the pillow was damp.

I turned on my side and reached
out gently for Naomi, already
phrasing the wonderful gift-words I
had for her. “Naomi! I know how
long it will take now. It needn’t take
more than three years. Perhaps as
httle as two and a half.”

My hand, meeting nothing but the
rough cloth, sought further. Then I
opened my eyes and sat up with a
start.

1 was alone.

Full daylight was pouring into the
room. It was bright and sunny and
very warm. Where was she? I must
go in seareh of her and tell her the
wonderful news.

My clothes were on the floor by
the bed. 1 pulled them on, thrust
my feet in my sandals and padded
to the door, pausing with one hand
on the split jamb to accustom my
eyes to the glare.

Just across the narrow street,
leaning his elbows on the stone wall,
was a man with his back to me. He
gave not the slightest hint that he
was aware of being watched. It
was a man I knew at once, even
though I’d met him no more than
twice in my life. He called himself
Roger Gurney.

I spoke his name, and he didn’t
turn around. He lifted one arm and
made a kind of beckoning motion.
I was sure then what had happened,
but I walked forward to stand be-

side him, waiting for him to tell
me.

Still he didn’t look- at me. He
merely gestured toward the sharp
rocks with which the end of the
wall united. He said, “She came out
at dawn and went up there. To the
top. She was carrying her clothes
in her hand. She threw them one
by one into the sea. And then — ”
He turned his hand over, palm
down, as though pouring away a
little pile of sand.

I tried to say something, but, my
throat was choked.

“She couldn’t swim,” Gurney add-
ed after a moment. “Of course.”
Now I could speak. I said, “But
my God! Did you see it happen?”
He nodded.

“Didn’t you go after her? Didn’t
you rescue her?”

“We recovered her body.”

“Then — artificial respiration!
You must have been able to do
something!”

“She lost her race against time,”
Gurney said after a pause. “She had
admitted it.”

“I — ” I checked myself. It was
becoming so clear that I cursed my-
self for a fool. Slowly I went on,
“How much longer would she have
been beautiful?”

“Yes.” He expressed the word
with form. “That was the thing she
was running from. She wanted him
to return and find her still lovely,
and no one in the world would
promise her more than another
three years. After that, the doctors
say, she would have — ” he made
an empty gesture — “crumbled.”

“She would always have been
beautiful,” I said. “My God! Even
looking her real age, she’d have
been beautiful!”

“We think so,” Gurney said.
“And so stupid, so futile!” 1
slammed my fist into my palm. “You
too, Gurney. Do you realize what
you’ve done, you fool?” My voice
shook with anger, and for the first
time he faced me.

“Why in hell didn’t you revive her
and send for me? It needn’t have
taken more than three years! Last
night she demanded an answer and
I told her ten. But it came clear to
me during the night how it could
be done in less than three!”

“I thought that was how it must
have been.” His face was white, but
the tips of his ears were — absurdly
— brilliant pink. “If you hadn’t said
that. Cooper; if you hadn’t said
that.”

And then (I was still that wave-
tossed cork, up one moment, down
the next, up again the next) it came
to me what my inspiration of the
night really implied. I clapped my
hand to my forehead.

“Idiot!” I said. “I don’t know
what I’m doing yet! Look, you have
her body! Get it to — to wherever
it is, with the other one, quick. What
the hell else have I been doing but
working to re-create a human being?
And now I’ve seen how it can be
done, I can do it. I can re-create
her as well as him!” I was in a fever
of excitement, having darted for-
ward in my mind to that strange fu-
ture I had visited in my sleep, and
my barely-visualized theories were
solid fact.

THE TOTALLY RICH 103

He was regarding me strangely.
I thought he hadn’t understood. I
went on, “What are you standing
there for? I can do it, I tell you.
I’ve seen how it can be done. It’s
going to take men and money, but
those can be got.”

“No,” Gurney said.

“What?” I let my arms fall to
my sides, blinking in the sunlight.

“No,” he repeated. He stood up,
stretching arms cramped by long
resting on the rough top of the wall.
“You see, it isn’t hers any longer.
Now she’s dead, it belongs to some-
body else.”

Dazed, I drew back a pace. I
said, “Who?”

“How can I tell you? And what
would it mean to you if I did? You
ought by now to know what kind of
people you’re dealing with.”

I put my hand in my pocket, feel-
ing for my cigarettes. I was trying
to make it come clear to myself.
Now Naomi was dead she no longer
controlled the resources which could
bring her back.

So my dream was — a dream.

I was staring stupidly at the thing
which had met my hand. It wasn’t
cigarettes. It was the leather wallet
she had given me.

“You can keep that,” Gurney
said. “I was told you could keep
it.”

I looked at him. And I knew.

Very slowly I unzipped the wallet.
I took out the three cards. They
were sealed in plastic. I folded them
in half, and the plastic cracked. I
tore them across and let them fall
to the ground. Then, one by one, I
ripped the checks out of the book

»04 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
and let them drift confetti-wise over
the wall, down to the sea that crashed
over the rocks.

He watched me, the color com-
ing :o his face until at last he was
flushing red — with guilt, shame, I
don’t know. When I had finished, he
said in a voice that was still level,
“You’re a fool. Cooper. You could
still have bought your dreams with
those.”

I threw the wallet in his face and
turned away. I had gone ten steps,
blind with anger and sorrow, when
I heard him speak my name and
looked back. He was holding the
wallet in both hands, and his mouth
was working.

He said, “Damn you. Cooper. 1
— I told myself I loved her, and
I couldn’t have done that. Why do
you want to make me feel so
dirtyT

“Because you are,” I said. “And
now you know it.”

T 'hree men I hadn’t seen before
came into my house as I was crat-
ing the machine. Silent as ghosts,
impersonal as robots, they helped
me put my belongings in my car.
1 welcomed their aid simply because
1 wanted to get to hell out of this
mock village as fast as possible. 1
told them to throw the things I
wanted to take with me all anyhow
in the passenger seats and the lug-
gage compartment, without bother-
ing to pack cases. While 1 was at
it, 1 saw Gurney come to the side
of the house and stand by the car

as though trying to pluck up courage
to speak to me again. I ignored
him. When I went out he had gone. I
didn’t find the wallet until I was in
Barcelona sorting through the jum-
bled belongings. It held, this time,
thirty-five thousand pesetas in new
notes. He had just thrown it on the
back seat under a pile of clothes.

Listen. It wasn’t a long span of
time which defeated Naomi. It
wasn’t three years, or ten years, or
any number of years. I worked it
out later — too late. (So time de-
feated me, too, as it always defeats
us.)

I don’t know how her man died.
But I’m sure I know why she want-
ed him back. Not because she loved
him, as she herself believed, but be-
cause he loved her; and without him
she was afraid. It didn’t need three
years to re-create her. It didn’t even
need three hours. It needed three
words.

And Gurney, the bastard, could
have spoken them, long before I
could — so long before that there
was still time. He could have said,
“I love you.”

These are the totally rich. They
inhabit the same planet, breathe the
same air. But they are becoming,
little by little, a different species,
because what was most human in
them is — well, this is my opinion
— dead.

They keep apart, as I mentioned
And God! Aren’t you grateful?

END

■A- ' 1 ^ ’A’ ★

Worlds of Tomorrow • Short Story

CAKEWALK
TO GLORYANNA

BY L. J. STECHER, JR.

The Job was easy. The profit was
enormous. The only trouble was —
the cargo had a will of its own!

C aptain Hannah climbed painfully
down from the Delta Crucis,
hobbled across the spaceport to
where Beulah and 1 were waiting to
greet him and hit me in the eye.
Beulah — that’s his elephant, but I
have to take care of her for him
because Beulah’s baby belongs to
me and Beulah has to take care of
it — kept us apart until we both
cooled down a little. Then, although
still somewhat dubious about it, she
let us go together across the field
to the spaceport bar.

I didn’t ask Captain Hannah why
he had socked me.

Although he has never been a

handsome man, he usually has the
weathered and austere dignity that
comes from plying the remote
reaches among the stars. Call it the
Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah
had lost the Look of Eagles. His
eyes were swollen almost shut; every
inch of him that showed was a red
mass of welts piled on more welts,
as though he had tangled with a hive
of misanthropic bees. The gold-
braided hat of his trade was not
clamped in its usual belligerent po-
sition slightly over one eye. It was
riding high on his head, apparently
held up by more of the ubiquitous
swellings.

CAKEWALK TO OlORYANNA 105

106 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
1 figured that he figured that I
had something to do with the way
he looked.

“Shipping marocca to Gloryanna
III didn’t turn out to be a cakewalk
after all?” 1 suggested.

He glared at me in silence.
“Perhaps you would like a drink
first, and then you would be willing
to tell me about it?”

I decided that his wince was 'n-
tended for a nod, and ordered rhial.
I only drink rhial when I’ve been
exposed to Captain Hannah. It was
almost a pleasure to think that /
was responsible, for a change, for
having him take the therapy.

“A Delta Class freighter can carry
almost anything,” he said at last, in
a travesty of his usual forceful voice.
“But some things it should never
try.”

H e lapsed back into silence after
this uncharacteristic admission.
I almost felt sorry for him, but just
then Beulah came racking across the
field with her two-ton infant in tow,
to show her off to Hannah. I walled
off my pity. He had foisted those two
maudlin mastodons off onto me in
one of our earlier deals, and if I
had somehow been responsible for
his present troubles, it was no more
than he deserved. I rated winning
for once.

“You did succeed in getting the
marocca to Gloryanna III?” I asked
anxiously, after the elephants had
been admired and sent back home.
The success of that venture— even
if the job had turned out to be more
difficult than we had expected —
meant an enormous profit to both
of us. The fruit of the marocca it

delicious and fabulously expensive.
The plant grew only on the single
planet Mypore II. Transshipped
seeds invariably failed to germinate,
which explained its rarity.

The Myporians were usually,
and understandably, bitterly, op-
posed to letting any of the living
plants get shipped off their planet
But when I offered them a sizable
piece of cash plus a perpetual share
of the profits for letting us take a
load of marocca plants to Glory-
anna III, they relented and, for the
first time in history, gave their as-
sent. In fact, they had seemed de-
lighted.

“I got them there safely,” said
Captain Hannah.

“And they are growing all right?”
I persisted.

“When I left, marocca was growing
like mad,” said Captain Hannah.

I relaxed and leaned back in my
chair. I no longer felt the need of
rhial for myself. “Tell me about it,”
I suggested.

ttTt was you who said that we
A should carry those damn plants
to Gloryanna III,” he said balefully.
“I ought to black your other eye.”

“Simmer down and have some
more rhial,” I told him. “Sure I get
the credit for that. Gloryanna III is
almost a twin to Mypore II. You
know that marocca takes a very spe-
cial kind of environment. Bright sun
most of the time — that means an al-
most cloudless environment. A very
equable climate. Days and nights the
same length and no seasons — that
means no ecliptical and no axial tilt.
But our tests showed that the plants
had enough tolerance to cause no

CAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA 107

trouble in the trip in Delta Crucis.”
A light dawned. “Our tests were no
good?”

“Your tests were no good,” agreed
the captain with feeling. “I’ll tell
you about it first, and then I’ll black
your other eye,” he decided.

“You’ll remeinber that I warned
you that we should take some ma-
rocca out into space and solve any
problems we might find before com-
mitting ourselves to hauling a full
load of it?” asked Captain Hannah.

“We couldn’t,” I protested. “The
Myporians gave us a deadline. If
we had gone through all of that rig^
amarole, we would have lost the
franchise. Besides, they gave you
full written instructions about what
to do under all possible circum-
stances.”

“Sure. Written in Myporian. A
very difficult language to trans-
late. Especially when you’re barri-
caded in the head.”

I almost asked him why he had
been barricaded in the bathroom of
the Delta Crucis, but I figured it
was safer to let him tell me in his
own way, in his own time.

“Well,” he said, “I got into park-
ing orbit around Mypore without
any trouble. The plastic film kept
the water in the hydroponic tanks
without any trouble, even in a no-
gravity condition. And by the time
I had lined up for Gloryanna and
Jumped, I figured, like you said,
that the trip would be a cakewalk.

“Do you remember how the plants
always keep their leaves facing the
sun? They twist on their stems all
day, and then they go on twisting
them all night, still pointing at the
underground sun, so that they’re

aimed right at sunrise. So the stem
looks like a corkscrew?”

I nodded. “Sure. That’s why they
can’t stand an axial tilt. They ‘re-
member’ the rate and direction of
movement, and keep it up during
the night time. So what? We had
that problem all figured out.”

“You think so? That solution was
one of yours, too, wasn’t it?” He
gazed moodily at his beaker of rhial.
“I must admit it sounded good to
me, too. In Limbo, moving at mul-
tiple light-speeds, the whole Uni-
verse, of course, turns into a bright
glowing spot in our direction of mo-
tion, with everything else dark. So
I lined up the Delta Crucis perpen-
dicular to her direction of motion,
put a once-every-twenty-one hour
spin on her to match the rotation
rates of Mypore II and Gloryanna
III, and uncovered the view ports to
let in the light. It gradually bright-
ened until ‘noon time’, with the ports
pointing straight at the light source,
and then dimmed until we had ten
and one-half hours of darkness.

“Of course, it (fidn’t work.”

CCT^or Heaven’s sake, why not?”
“For Heaven’s sake why
should it? With no gravity for ref-
erence, how were the plants sup-
posed to know that the ‘sun’ was
supposed to be moving?”

“So what did you do?” I asked,
when that had sunk in. “If the stem
doesn’t keep winding, the plants
die; and they can only take a few
extra hours of night time before they
run down.”

“Oh,” said Captain Hannah in
quiet tones of controlled desperation,
“it was very simple. I just put

108 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
enough spin on the ship to make ar-
tificial gravity, and then I strung a
light and moved it every fifteen min-
utes for ten and one-hdf hours, un-
til I had gone halfway around the
room. Then I could turn the light
off and rest for ten and one-half
hours. The plants liked it fine.

“Of course, first I had to move all
the hydroponic tanks from their or-
iginal positions perpendicular to the
axial thrust line of the ship to
a radial position. And because
somehow we had picked up half of
the plants in the northern hemis-
phere of Mypore and the other half
in the southern hemisphere, it turned
out that half of the plants had a sin-
istral corkscrew and the other half
had a dextral. So I had to set the
plants up in two different rooms,
and run an artificial sun for each,
going clockwise with one, widder-
shins with the other.

“I won’t even talk about what I
went through while I was shifting
the hydroponic tanks, when all the
plastic membranes that were sup-
posed to keep the water in place
started to break.”

“I’d like to know,” I said sin-
cerely.

He stared at me in silence for a
moment. “Well, it filled the cabin
with great solid bubbles of water.
Water bubbles will oscillate and
wobble like soap bubbles,” he went
on dreamily, “but of course, they’re
not empty, like soap bubbles. The
surface acts a little like a membrane,
so that sometimes two of the things
will touch and gently bounce apart
without joining. But just try touch-
ing one of them. You could drown —
I almost did. Several times.

“I got a fire pump — an empty j
one. You know the kind; a wide ]
cylinder with a piston with a han- I
die, and a hose that you squirt the
water out of, or can suck water in ■
with. The way you use it is, you
float up on a big ball of water, j
with the pump piston down — closed, j
You carefully poke the end of the j
hose into the ball of water, letting {
only the metal tip touch. Never the j
hose.' If y^ou let the hose touch, the i
water runs up it and tries to drown I
you. Then you pull up on the piston, j
and draw all the water into the cylin- |
der. Of course, you have to hold
the pump with your feet while you |
pull the handle with your free hand.” |
“Did it work?” I asked eagerly. \
“Eventually. Then I stopped to
think of what to do with the water.

It was full of minerals and manure
and such, and I didn’t want to in-
troduce it into the ship’s tanks.”

“But you solved the problem?”

C(Tn a sense,” said the captain.

-I “I just emptied the pump
back into the air, ignored the bub-
bles, repositioned the tanks, put
spin on the ship and then ladled the
liquid back into the tanks with a
bucket.”

“Didn’t you bump into a lot of
the bubbles and get yourself dunked
a good deal while you were working
with the tanks?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t say. By
that time I was ignoring them. It
was that or suicide. I had begun to
get the feeling that they were stalk-
ing me. So I drew a blank.”

“Then after that you were all
right, except for the tedium of mov- i
ing the lights around?” I asked him. J

I answered myself at once. “No.
There must be more. You haven’t
told me why you hid out in the
bathroom, yet.”

“Not yet,” said Captain Hannah.
“Like you, I figured I had the situ-
ation fairly well under control, but
like you, I hadn’t thought things
through. The plastic membranes
hadn’t torn when we brought the
tanks in board the Delta Crucis. It
never occurred to me to hunt around
for the reasons for the change. But
I wouldn’t have had long to hunt
anyway, because in a few hours :he
reasons came looking for me.

“They were a tiny skeeter-like
thing. A sort of midge or junior
grade mosquito. They had apparent-
ly been swimming in the water dur-
ing their larval stage. Instead of
making cocoons for themselves, they
snipped tiny little pieces of plastic
to use as protective covers in the
pupal stage. I guess they were more
like butterflies than mosquitoes in
their habits. And now they were
mature.

“There were thousands and thou-
sands of them, and each one of them
made a tiny, maddening whine as it
flew.”

“And they bit? That explains your
bumps?” I asked sympathetically.

“Oh, no. These things didn’t bite,
they itched. And they got down in-
side of everything they could get
down inside, and clung. That includ-
ed my ears and my eyes and my
nose.

“I broke out a hand sprayer full
of a DDT solution, and sprayed it
around me to try to clear the near-
by air a little, so that I could have

CAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA 109
room to think. The midges loved it.
But the plants that were in reach
died so fast that you could watch
their leaves curl up and drop off.

“I couldn’t figure whether to
turn up the fans and dissipate the
cloud — by spreading it all through
the ship — or whether to try to block
off the other plant room, and save
it at least. So I ended up by not do-
ing anything, which was the right
thing to do. No more plants died
from the DDT.

( 4 Qo then I did a few experiments,

O and found that the regular
poison spray in the ship’s fumiga-
tion system worked just fine. It
killed the bugs without doing the
plants any harm at all. Of course, the
fumigation system is designed to
work with the fumigator off the
ship, because it’s poisonous to hu-
mans too.

“I finally blocked the vents and
the door edges in the head, after
miming some remote controls into
there, and then started the fumiga-
tion system going. While I was
sitting there with nothing much to
do, I tried to translate what I could
of the Myporian instmctions. It was
on page eleven that it mentioned
casually that the midges — the cor-
rect word is carolla — are a neces-
sary part of the life cycle of the
marocca. The larvae provide an
enzyme without which the plants
die.

“Of course. I immediately stop-
ped slapping at the relatively few
midges that had made their way into
the head with me, and started to
change the air in the ship to get rid
of the poison. I knew it was too lata

no WORLDS OF TOMORROW

before I started, and for once I waa

right.

“The only live midges left in the
ship were the ones that had been
with me during the fumigation pro-
cess. I immediately tried to start a
breeding ground for midges, but the
midges didn’t seem to want to coop-
erate. Whatever I tried to do, they
came back to me. I was the only
thing they seemed to love. I didn’t
dare bathe, or scratch, or even wrig-
gle, for fear of killing more of them.
And they kept on itching. It was just
about unbearable, but I bore it for
three interminable days while the
midges died one by one. It was
heartbreaking — at least, it was to
me.

“And it was unnecessary', too. Be-
cause apparently the carolla had
already laid their eggs, or whatever
it is that they do. before I had fumi-
gated them. After my useless days
of agony, a new batch came swarm-
ing out. And this time there were a
few of a much larger thing with
them — something like an enormous
moth. The new thing just blundered
around aimlessly.

“I lit out for the head again, to
keep away from that intolerable
whining. This time I took a luxur-
ious shower and got rid of most of
the midges that came through the
door with me. I felt almost comfort-
able, in fact, until I resumed my ef-
forts to catch up on my reading.

“The mothlike things — they are
called dingleburys — also turn out to
provide a necessary enzyme. They
are supposed to have the same tim-
ing of their lif? cycle as the carolla.
Apparently the shaking up I had
given their larvae in moving the

tanks and dipping the water up in
buckets and all that had inhibited
them in completing their cycle the
first time around.

“And the reason they had the
same life cycle as the carolla was •
that the adult dinglebury will eat
only the adult carolla, and it has
to fill itself full to bursting before
it will reproduce. If I had the trans-
lation done correctly, they were sup-
posed to dart gracefully around,
catching carolla on the wing and
stuffing themselves happily.

“I had to find out what was wrong
with my awkward dingleburys. And
that, of course, meant going out in- <
to the ship again. But I had to do
that anyway, because it was almost
‘daylight’, and time for me to start
shifting the lights again.

CC^'T^he reason for the dingleburys’

A problem is fairly obvious.
When you set up artificial gravity
by spinning a ship, the gravity is
fine down near the skin where the
plants are. But the gravity potential
is very high, and it gets very light
up where things fly around, going
to zero on the middle line of the
ship. And the unfamiliar gravity
gradient, together with the Coriolis
effect and all, makes the poor din-
gleburys dizzy, so they can’t catch
carolla.

“And if you think I figured all that
out about dingleburys getting dizzy
at the time, in that madhouse of a
ship, then you’re crazy. What hap-
pened was that 1 saw that there was
one of the creatures that didn’t seem
to be having any trouble, but was
acting like the book said it should.

I caught it and examined it. The

poor thing was blind, and was cap-
turing her prey by sound alone.

“So I spent the whole day — -along
with my usual chore of shifting the
lights — blindfolding dingleburys.
Which is a hell of a sport for a
man who is captain of his own ship.”

I must say that I agreed with him,
but it seemed to be a good time for
me to keep my mouth shut.

“Well after the dingleburys had
eaten and propagated, they became
inqirisitive. They explored the whole
ship, going into places I wouldn’t
have believed it to be possible for
them to reach, including the inside
of the main computer, which
promptly shorted out. I finally fig-
ured that one of the things had man-
aged to crawl up the cooling air ex-
haust duct, against the flow of air,
to see what was going on inside.

“I didn’t dare to get rid of the
things without checking my book,
of course, so it was back to the
head for me. ‘Night’ had come
again — and it was the only place I
could get any privacy. There were
plenty of the carolla left to join
me outside.

“I showered and swatted and
started to read. I got as far as where
it .said that the dingleburys continued
to be of importance, and then I’m
afraid I fell asleep.

“I got up with the sun the next
morning. Hell, I had to. considering
that it was I who turned the sun
on! I found that the dingleburys im-
mediately got busy opening small
buds on the stems of the marocca
plants. Apparently they were pollin-
ating them. 1 felt sure that these
buds weren’t the marocca blossoms
from which the fruit formed — I’d

CAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA 111
seen a lot of those while we were on
Mypore II and they were much big-
ger and showier than these little
acorn-sized buds.

“Of course. I should have trans-
lated some more of my instruction
book, but I was busy.

“Anyway, the action of the din-
gleburys triggered the violent growth
phase of the marocca plants. Did
you know that they plant marocca
seedlings, back on Mypore II, at
least a hundred feet apart? If you’ll
recall, a mature field, which was the
only kind we ever saw, is one solid
mass of green growth.

C ( '"T^he book says that it takes just
-k six hours for a marocca field
to shift from the seedling stage to
the mature stage. It didn’t seem that
long. You could watch the stuff
grow- — groping and crawling along;
one plant twining with another as
they climbed toward the light.

“It was then that I began to get
worried. If they twined around the
light, they would keep me from
moving it, and they would shadow
it so it wouldn’t do its job right. In
effect, their growth would put out
the sun.

“I thought of putting up an elec-
trically charged fence around the
light, but the bugs had put most of
my loose equipment out of action, so
I got a machete. When I took a
swing at one of the vines, something
bit me on the back of the neck so
hard it almost knocked me down.
It was one of the dingleburys, and it
was as mad as blazes. It seems thqt
one of the things they do is to de-
fend the marocca against marau-
ders. That was the first of my welts.

T12 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

and it put me back in the head in

about two seconds.

“And what’s more, I found that
I couldn’t kill the damn things. Not
if I wanted to save the plants. The
growth only stops at the end of
six hours, after the blossoms ap-
pear and are visited by the dingle-
burys. No dingleburys, no growth
stoppage.

“So for the next several hours I
had to keep moving those lights,
and keep them clear of the vines,
and keep the vines from shadowing
each other to the point where they
curled up and died, and I had to do
it gently, surrounded by a bunch of
worried dingleburys.

“Every time they got a little too
worried, or I slipped and bumped
into a plant too hard, or looked
crosseyed at them, they bit me. If
you think I look bad now, you
should have seen me just about the
time the blossoms started to burst.

“I was worried about those blos-
soms. I felt sure that they would
smell terrible, or make me sick, or
hypnotize me, or something. But
they just turned out to be big, white,
odorless flowers. They did nothing
for me or to me. They drove the
dingleburys wild, though. I’m hap-
py to say. Made them forget all
about me.

' While they were having their
orgy, I caught up on my reading. It
was necessary for me to cut back the
marocca vines. For one thing, I
couldn’t get up to the area of the
bridge. For another, the main com-
puter was completely clogged. I
could use the auxiliary, on the
bridge, if I could get to it, but it’s a
poor substitute. For another thing.

I would have to cut the stuff way
back if I was ever going to get the
plants out of the ship. And I was a
little anxious to get my Delta Crucis
back to normal as soon as possible.
But before cutting, I had to translate
the gouge.

t(Tt turns out that it’s all right to
A cut marocca as soon as it
stops growing. To keep the plants
frcm dying, though, you have to
mulch the cuttings and then feed
them back to the plants, where the
roots store whatever they need
against the time of the next explo-
sive period of growth. Of course, if
you prefer you can wait for the vines
to die back naturally, which takes
several months.

“There was one little catch, of
course. The cuttings from the vines
will poison the plants if they are
fed back to them without having
been mixed with a certain amount
of processed mulch. Enzymes again.
And there was only one special pro-
cessor on board.

“I was the special processor.
That’s what the instructions said — I
translated very carefully — it required
an ‘organic processor’.

“So I had to eat pounds of that
horrible tasting stuff every day, and
process it the hard way.

“I didn’t even have time to
scratch my bites. I must have lost
weight everywhere but in the swol-
len places, and they looked worse
than they do now. The doctor says
it may take a year before the bumps
all go away — if they ever do — but I
have improved a lot already.

“For a while I must have been
out of my head. I got so caught up

in the rhythm of the thing that I
didn’t even notice when we slipped
out of Limbo into real space near
Gloryanna III. It was three days,
the Control Tower on Gloryanna III
told me, that they tried continuously
to raise me on the communications
gear before I heard the alarm bell
and answered them, so I had to do
\ a good deal of backtracking before
I could get into parking orbit
r around the planet, and then set Del-
ta Crucis down safely. Even as shaky
as I was. Delta Crucis behaved like
a lady.

“I hadn’t chopped off all of 'he
new growth, although I had the

( plants down to manageable size.
Some of the blossoms left on the
plants had formed fruit, and the
fruit had ripened and dried, and
the seeds had developed fully. They

I were popping and spreading fine
dust-like spores all over the ship,
those last few hours before I landed.

“By that time, though, an occa-
sional sneezing fit and watering
eyes didn’t bother me any. I was far
beyond the point where hay fever
could add to my troubles.

“When I opened the airlock door,
though, the spores drifting outside
set the customs inspectors to sneez-
ing and swearing more than seemed
reasonable at the time.” Captain
Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and
seemed to be enjoying the powerful
stuff. He acted as if he thought he
had finished.

“Well, go on,” I urged him. “The
marocca plants were still in good
shape, weren’t they?”

Hannah nodded. “They were
growing luxuriously.” He nodded
his head a couple of more times, in

CAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA 113
spite of the discomfort it must have
given him.

He said, “They made me burn
the entire crop right away, of course.
They didn’t get all of the carolla or
dingleburys, though. Or spores.”

4 C /Gloryanna III is the original

vJ home planet of marocca.
They hated the stuff, of course, but
they liked the profit. Then, when a
plague almost wiped out the dingle-
burys, they introduced khorram furs
as a cash crop. It wasn’t as lucra-
tive, but it was so much more pleas-
ant that they outlawed marocca.
Took them almost fifty years to
stamp it out completely. Meanwhile,
some clever native shipped a load
of the stuff to Mypore II. He took
his time, did it without any trouble
and made his fortune. And got out
again quickly.

“The Gloryannans were going to
hold my Delta Crucis as security to
pay for the cost of stamping out
marocca all over again — those
spores sprout fast — and for a time
I was worried.

“Of course, when I showed them
our contract — that you alone were
responsible for everything once I
landed the plants safely on Glory-
anna III, they let me go.

“They’ll send you the bill. They
don’t figure it will take them more
than a few months to complete the
job.”

Captain Hannah stopped talking
and stood up, painfuUy and a little
un.steadily.

I’m afraid I didn’t even notice
when he blacked my other eye. I
was too busy reaching for the rhial.

END

Worlds of Tomorrow • Serial

PEOPLE

OF THE SEA

CONCLUSION

BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

ILLUSTRATED BY WOOD

114 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 113

The dolphins sought Man’s aid
— but they were able to pay
for the favors they needed!

PART TWO
XIII

F or more than a hundred years
Dolphin Island had been haunt-
ed by a legend. lohnny would have
heard of it soon enough, but as it
happened, he made the discovery by
himself.

He had been taking a short-cut
through the forest that covered
three-quarters of the island, and,
as usual, it turned out not to be
short at all. Almost as soon as he
left the path, he had lost his direc-
tion in the densely-packed pandanus
and pisonia trees, and was flound-
ering up to his knees in the sandy
soil that the mutton-birds had rid-
dled with their burrows.

It was a strange feeling, being
‘lost’ only a few hundred feet from

the crowded settlement and all his
friends. He could easily imagine
that he was in the heart of some
vast jungle, a thousand miles from
civilization. There was all the lone-
liness and mystery of the untamed
wild, with none of its danger —
for if he pushed on in any direction,
he would be out of the tiny forest
in five minutes. True, he wouldn’t
come out in the place he had in-
tended. But that hardly mattered
on so small an island.

Suddenly he became aware of
something odd about the patch of
jungle into which he had blundered.
The trees were smaller and further
apart than elsewhere, and as he
looked around him, Johnny slowly
realized that this had once been a
clearing in the forest. It must have
been abandoned a long, long time
ago, for it had become almost

116 ' VORLDS OF TOMORROW

What Has Gone Before —

Johnny Clinton ran away to sea. The ship he stowed away on
was a hovercraft, not an ocean vessel; hut when it developed
trouble in the middle of the Pacific it sank as readily as any sur-
face craft. Abandoned by the crew, Johnny was aided to shore by
dolphins. They towed his makeshift raft to an island where a
project was underway for research into communication between
men and dolphins. This was no accident. The dolphins knew what
they were doing. Bringing Johnny to the island was an earnest of
good faith, for they wanted to ask a favor of the human race: the
extinction, or neutralization, of their ancient enemies, the killer
whales. While this question was being debated Johnny explored
his new island home in the company of the Maori lad, Mick.

completely overgrown. In a few
more years, all trace of it would
be lost.

Who could have lived here, he
wondered, years before radio and
aircraft had brought the Great
Barrier Reef into contact with the
world? Criminals? Pirates? All sorts
of romantic ideas flashed through
his mind, and he began to poke
around among the roots of the trees
to see what he could find.

He had become a little discour-
aged, and was wondering if he was
simply imagining things, when he
came across some smoke-blackened
stones half covered by leaves and
earth. A fireplace, he decided, and
redoubled his efforts. Almost at
once, he found some pieces of rusty

iron, a cup that had lost its handle
and a broken spoon.

That was all. It was not a very
exciting treasure trove, but it did
prove that civilized people, not sav-
ages, had been here long ago. No
one would come to Dolphin Island,
so far from land, merely to have
a picnic. Whoever they were, they
must have had a good reason.

Taking the spoon as a souvenir,
Johnny left the clearing. Ten min-
utes later he was back on the
beach. He went in search of Mick,
whom he found in the classroom,
nearing the end of Mathematics II,
tape 23. As soon as Mick had fin-
ished, switched off the teaching
machine and thumbed his nose at
it, Johnny showed him the spoon

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 117

118 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

and described where he had found

it.

To his surprise, Mick seemed ill
at ease.

“I wish you hadn’t taken that,”
he said. “Better put it back.”

“But why?” asked Johnny in
amazement.

Mick was quite embarrassed. He
scuffed his large, bare feet on the
polished plastic floor and did not
answer directly.

“Of course,” he said, “I don’t
really believe in ghosts, but I’d hate
to be there by myself on a dark
night.”

Johnny was now getting a little
exasperated, but he knew that he’d
have to let Mick tell the story in
his own way. He began by taking
Johnny to the Message Center,
putting through a local call to the
Brisbane Museum and speaking a
few words to the Assistant Curator
of the Queensland History Depart-
ment.

A few seconds later, a strange
object appeared on the vision
screen. It was a small iron tank or
cistern, about four feet square and
two feet deep, standing in a glass
display case. Beside it were two
crude oars.

“What do you think that is?”
asked Mick.

“It looks like a water tank to
me,” said Johnny.

“Yes,” said Mick, “but it was a
boat, too. And it sailed from this
island a hundred and thirty years
ago — with three people in it.”

“Three people — in a thing that
size!”

“Well, one was a baby. The

grown-ups were an English-woman
called Mary Watson, and her Chi-
nese cook, whose name I don’t re-
member — ^it was Ah Something. . .”

A s the strange story unfolded,
Johnny was transported back
in time to an age that he could
scarcely imagine. Yet it was only
1881 — not yet a century and
a half ago. There had been tele-
phones and steam engines then,
and Albert Einstein had already
been born. But along the Great
Barrier Reef, cannibals still pad-
died their war canoes.

Despite this. Captain Watson
had set up his home on Dolphin
Island. His business was collecting
and selling sea-cucumbers or beche-
de-mer — the ugly, sausage-like crea-
tures that crawled sluggishly in ev-
ery coral pool. The Chinese paid
high prices for the dried skins,
which they valued for medical pur-
poses.

Soon, the island’s supplies of
beche-de-mer were exhausted, and
the captain had to search further and
further from home. He was away
in his small ship for weeks at a
time, leaving his young wife to
look after the house and her new-
born son, with the help of two Chi-
nese servants.

It was while the captain was
away that the savages landed. They
killed one of the Chinese houseboys
and seriously injured the other be-
fore Mary Watson drove them off
with rifle and revolver. But she
knew that they would return —
and that her husband’s ship would
not be back for another month.

The situation was desperate, but
Mary Watson was a brave and re-
sourceful woman. She decided to
leave the island in a small iron tank
used for boiling beche-de-mer, hop-
ing that she would be picked up
be one of the ships plying along
the Reef.

She stocked her tiny, unstable
craft with food and water and
paddled away from her home. The
houseboy was gravely injured, and
could give her little help. Her four-
month-old son must have needed
constant attention. She had just one
stroke of luck, without which the
voyage would not have lasted ten
minutes. The sea was perfectly
calm.

The next day they grounded on
a neighboring reef. They remained
there for two days, hoping to see
a boat. But no ships came in sight,
so they pushed off again and even-
tually reached a small island, forty-
two miles from their starting point.

And it was from this island that
they saw a steamer going by. But
no one on board noticed Mrs. Wat-
son franticahy waving her baby’s
shawl.

Now they had exhausted all their
water, and there was none on the
island. Yet they survived another
four days, slowly dying of thirst,
hoping for rains that never came
and for ships that never appeared.

Three months later, quite by
chance, a passing schooner sent
men ashore to search for food.

Instead, they found the body of
the Chinese cook and, hidden in
the undergrowth, the iron tank.
Huddled inside it was Mary Wat-

PEOPLE OF THE SEA IIP
son, with her baby son still in her
arms. And beside her was the log
of the eight-day voyage, which she
had kept to the very end.

“I’ve seen it in the Museum,”
said Mick, very solemnly. “It’s on
half a dozen sheets of paper, tom
out of a notebook. You can still
read most of it, and I’ll never for-
get the last entry. It just says: ‘No
water — nearly dead with thirst.’ ”

For a long time neither boy said
anything. Then Johnny looked at
the broken spoon he was still hold-
ing.

It was foolish, of course, but he
would put it back, out of respect
for Mary Watson’s gallant ghost.
He could understand the feelings
of Mick and his people towards her
memory. He wondered how often,
on moonlit nights, the more imagi-
native islanders believed that they
had seen a young woman pushing
an iron box out to sea. . .

Then another, and much more
disturbing, thought suddenly struck
him. He turned towards Mick,
wondering just how to put the ques-
tion. But it was not necessary, for
Mick answered without prompting.

“I feel pretty bad about the whole
thing,” he said, “even though it was
such a long time ago. You see, I
know for a fact that my grand-
father’s grandfather helped to cat
the other Chinaman.”

XIV

E very day now, Johnny and
Mick would go swimming with
the two dolphins, trying to find the
limits of their intelligence and their

120 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
cooperation. They now tolerated
Mick and would obey his requests
when he was using the communica-
tor, but they remained unfriendly
to him. Sometimes they would try
to scare him, by charging him with
teeth showing, then turning aside
at the last possible moment. They
never played such tricks with
Johnny, though they would often
nibble at his flippers or rub gently
against him, expecting to be tickled
and stroked in return.

This prejudice upset Mick, who
couldn’t see why Susie and Sputnik
preferred, as he put it, “an under-
sized little pale-skin” like Johnny.
But dolphins are as temperamental
as human people. There is no ac-
counting for tastes. Mick’s oppor-
tunity was to come later, though in
a way that no one could have
guessed.

Despite occasional arguments
and quarrels, the boys were now
firm friends, and were seldom far
apart. Mick was, indeed, the first
really close friend that Johnny had
ever made. There was good reason
for this, though he did not know it.
After losing both his parents, at
such an early age, he had been
afraid to risk his affections else-
where. But now the break with his
past was so complete that it had
lost much of its power over him.

Besides, Mick was someone
whom anybody could admire. Like
most of the islanders, he had a
splendid physique. Generations of
sea-battling forefathers had made
sure of that. He was alert and in-
telligent, and full of Information
about things of which Johnny had

never heard. His faults were minor
ones — rashness, exaggeration and
a fondness for practical jokes,
which sometimes got him into trou-
ble.

Towards Johnny he felt protec-
tive, almost fatherly, as a big man
can often be towards a much small-
er one. And perhaps the warm-
hearted island boy, with his four
brothers, three sisters and scores of
aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and
nieces, felt the inner loneliness of
this runaway orphan from the other
side of the world.

Ever since he had mastered the
basic technique of diving, Johnny
had been pestering Mick to take
him exploring off the edge of the
reef, where he could test his new
skills in deep water and among big
fish. But Mick had taken his time.
Though he was impatient in small
matters, he could be cautious in
big ones. He knew that diving in a
small, safe pool, or close to the
jetty, was very different from op-
erating in the open sea. So many
things could go wrong. There were
powerful currents, unexpected
storms might spring up, sharks
might make a nuisance of them-
selves. The sea was full of surprises,
even for the most experienced
diver. It was merciless to those who
made mistakes. It did not give them
a second chance.

Johnny’s opportunity came in a
way that he had not expected.

Susie and Sputnik were responsi-
ble. Professor Kazan had decided
that it was time they went out into
the world to earn their own livings.
He never kept a pair of dolphins

longer than a year, believing that
it was not fair to do so. They were
social creatures, and needed to
make contact with their own kind.
Most of his subjects, when he re-
leased them, remained close to the
island and could always be called
through the underwater loud-speak-
ers. He was quite sure that Susie
and Sputnik would behave in the
same way.

In fact, they simply refused to
leave.

When the gate of the pool was
opened, they swam a little way
down the channel leading into the
sea, then darted back as if afraid
that they would be shut outside.

“I know what’s wrong,” said Mick
in disgust. “They’re so used to be-
ing fed by us that they’re too lazy
to catch their own fish.”

There might have been some
truth in that, but it was not the
whole explanation. For when Pro-
fessor Kazan asked Johnny to swim
down the channel, they followed
him out to sea. He did not even
have to press any of the buttons
on the communicator.

A fter that, there was no more
swimming in the deserted pool
— for which, though no one knew
it. Professor Kazan now had other
purposes in mind. Every morning,
immediately after their first session
at school, Mick and Johnny would
meet the two dolphins and head out
to the reef. Usually they took
Mick’s surf-board with them, as a
floating base on which they could
load their gear and any fish that
they caught.

PEOPLE Of THE SEA 12t

Mick told a hair-raising tale of
sitting on this same board while a
tiger shark prowled around, trying
to take a bite out of a 30-pound
barracuda he’d shot and foolishly
left dangling in the water. “If you
want to live a long time on the
Great Barrier Reef,” he said, “get
your speared fish out of the sea
as quickly as you can. Australian
sharks are the meanest in the world.
They grab three or four divers
every year.”

That was nice to know; Johnny
wondered how long it would take
a shark to chew through the two
inches of foam-and-fibreglass in
Mick’s board, if it really tried. . .

But with Susie and Sputnik as
escorts, there was no danger from
sharks. Indeed, they hardly ever
saw one. The presence of the two
dolphins gave them a wonderful
sense of security, such as no diver
in the open sea could ever have felt
before. Sometimes Susie and Sput-
nik were joined by Einar and
Peggy, and once a school of at least
fifty dolphins accompanied them
on one of their swims. This was too
much of a good thing, for the water
was so crowded that visibility was
almost zero. But Johnny could not
bring himself to hurt anyone’s feel-
ings by pressing the GO button.

He had swum often enough in
the shallow pools on the great coral
plateau round the island, but to dive
off the reefs outer edge was a
much more awe-inspiring experi-
ence. The water was sometimes so
clear that Johnny felt he was float-
ing in mid-air, with no means of
support. He could look down and

122 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
see absolutely nothing between him-
self and a jagged coral landscape
forty feet below. He had to keep
reminding himself that it was im-
possible to fall.

In some areas, the great fringing
reef around the island ended sharp-
ly in an almost vertical wall of
coral. It was fascinating to sink
slowly down the face of this wall,
surprising the gorgeously colored
fish that lived in its cracks and re-
cesses. At the end of a dive, Johnny
would try to identify the most strik-
ing of the reef-butterflies in the in-
stitute’s reference books; but he
usually found that they had no pop-
ular names, only unpronounceable
Latin ones.

A lmost everywhere one might
run into isolated boulders and
pinnacles, rising suddenly out of
the sea-bed and reaching almost to
the surface. Mick called these
“bommies,” and sometimes they re-
minded Johnny of the carved rock
formations in the Grand Canyon.
These, however, had not been
shaped by the forces of erosion.
They had grown into their present
forms, for they were the accumu-
lated skeletons of countless coral
animals. Only the thin surface was
now alive, over a massive core of
dead limestone weighing many tons,
and ten or twenty feet high. When
the underwater visibility was poor,
as was sometimes the case after a
storm or rain shower, it was star-
tling to come across one of these
stone monsters looming suddenly
out of the mist.

Many of them were riddled with

caves. These caves were always in-
habited. It was not a good idea to
enter them until you had discover-
ed who was at home. It might be
a moray eel, constantly snapping
his hideous jaws; it might be a
family of friendly but dangerous
scorpion fish, waving their poison-
tipped spines like a bundle of tur-
key feathers. If the cave was a
large one, it would usually be a
rock-cod or grouper. Some of these
were much bigger than Johnny, but
they were quite harmless and
hacked nervously away when he ap-
proached them.

In a surprisingly short time, he
grew to recognize individual fish
and to know where to find them.
The groupers never strayed far.
Johnny soon began to look on some
of them as personal friends. One
scarred veteran had a fishhook
embedded in his lower lip, with a
piece of line still hanging from it.
Despite his unfortunate experience
with mankind, he was not un-
friendly, and even allowed Johnny
to come close enough to stroke him

The groupers, the morays, the
scorpion fish — these were the ,
permanent residents of the subma-
rine landscape that Johnny was be-
ginning to know and love. But
sometimes there would be unex-
pected and exciting visitors swim-
ming in from deeper water. It was
part of the reefs attraction that
you never knew what you would
meet on any given dive, even in
an area that you had visited a
dozen times before and knew like
the proverbial back of your hand.

Sharks were, of course, the com-

monest prowlers of the reef. Johnny
never forgot the first he met, one
day when he and Mick had given
their escorts the slip by going out
an hour earlier than usual. He
never saw it coming. It was sud-
denly there, a gray, superbly
streamlined torpedo moving slowly
and effortlessly towards him. It
was so beautiful, so graceful that
it was impossible to think of it as
dangerous. Not until it had ap-
proached to within twenty feet did
Johnny look round anxiously for
Mick. He was relieved to find his
friend snorkling immediately above
him, eyeing the situation calmly but
with loaded speargun at the ready.

The shark, like almost all sharks,
was merely inquisitive. It looked
Johnny over with its cold, staring
eyes — so different from the friend-
ly, intelligent eyes of the dolphins —
and swerved off to the right when
it was ten feet away. Johnny had a
perfect view of the pilot fish swim-
ming in front of its nose, and the
remora or sucker fish clamped on
to its back — an ocean-going hitch-
hiker, using his suction-pad to give
him a free ride through life.

T here was nothing that a diver
could do about sharks, except
to watch out for them and to leave
them alone in the hope that they
would do the same to him. If you
faced up to them, . they would al-
ways go away. But if you lost your
nerve and tried to run — well, any-
one who was stupid enough to run
deserved little sympathy, for a
shark could swim thirty m.p.h. to a
skin-diver’s three.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 123

More unnerving than any sharks
were the packs of barracuda that
roamed along the edge of the reef.
Johnny was very glad that the surf-
board was floating overhead, the
first time he discovered that the
water around him was full of the
silver sea-pike, with their hostile
eyes and aggressive, underslung
jaws. They were not very large —
three feet long at the most — but
there were hundreds of them. They
formed a circular wall with Johnny
at the center. It was a wall that
came closer and closer, as the bar-
racuda spiraled in to get a better
look at him, until presently he
could see nothing but their glitter-
ing bodies. Though he waved his
arms and shouted into the water,
it made not the slightest difference.
They inspected him at their leisure
— then, for no reason that he
could see, turned suddenly away
and disappeared into the blue.

Johnny surfaced, grabbed the
board and held an anxious confer-
ence with Mick across it. Every
few seconds he kept bobbing his
head underwater, to see if the wolf-
pack had returned.

“They won’t bother you,” said
Mick reassuringly. “ ’Cuda are cow-
ards. If you shoot one, all the oth-
ers will run away.”

Johnny was glad to know it, and
took the next meeting more calm-
ly. All the same, he never felt quite
happy ' when the silver hunters
closed in on him, like a fleet of
spaceships from an alien world.
Perhaps some day, one of them
would risk a nibble, and then the
whole pack would move in. . .

124 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

There was one serious difficulty
about exploring the reef. It was
too big. Most of it was far beyond
comfortable swimming range, and
there were areas out on the horizon
that had never been visited. Often
Johnny wished he could have gone
further into unknown territory, but
had been forced to save his strength
for the long swim home. It was on
one of these weary return journeys,
as he helped Mick to push the surf-
board loaded with at least a hun-
dred pounds of fish, that the an-
swer occurred to him.

Mick was skeptical, but agreed
that the idea would be splendid —
if it worked. “It’s not going to be
easy,” he said, “to make a harness
that will fit a dolphin. They’re so
well streamlined that it will slide
off them.”

“I’m thinking of a kind of elastic
collar, just ahead of the flippers. If
it’s broad enough, and tight enough,
it should stay on. Let’s not talk
about it, though. People will only
laugh at us.”

T his was good advice, but im-
possible to carry out. Every-
one wanted to know why they
needed sponge rubber, elastic web-
bing, nylon cord and oddly shaped
pieces of plastic, and they had to
confess the truth. There was no
hope of carrying out the first trials
in secrecy. Johnny had an embar-
rassingly large audience when he
fitted his harness onto Susie.

He ignored the jokes and sugges-
tions from the crowd as he buckled
the straps around the dolphin. She
was so trusting that she made no

objection, being quite confident that
Johnny would do nothing to harm
her. This was a strange new game,
and she was willing to learn the
rules.

The harness fitted over the front
part of the dolphin’s tapering body,
being prevented from slipping back
(so Johnny hoped) by the flippers
and dorsal fin. He had been very
careful to keep the straps clear of
the single blowhole on the back of
the head, through which the dol-
phin breathed when it surfaced —
and which closed automatically
when it dived.

Johnny attached the two nylon
traces to the harness and gave them
a good tug. Everything seemed to
be staying in place, so he fastened
the other ends to Mick’s surfboard
and climbed on top of it.

There was an ironic cheer from
the crowd as Susie pulled him away
from shore. She had needed no or-
ders. With her usual swift grasp of
the situation, she understood exact-
ly what Johnny was trying to do.

He let her drag him out for a
hundred yards, then pressed the
LEFT button on the communica-
tor. Susie responded at once. He
tried RIGHT, and again she obey-
ed. The surfboard was already mov-
ing faster than he could have swum,
yet the dolphin was barely exert-
ing herself.

They were heading straight out
to sea, when Johnny muttered, “I’ll
show them!” and signaled FAST.
The board gave a little jump and
started to fly across the waves as
Susie went into top gear. Johnny
slid back a little, so that the board

planed properly, and did no nose
down into the water. He felt very
excited and proud of himself, and
wondered how fast he was travel-
ing. Flat out, Susie could do at least
thirty miles an hour. Even with the
drag of the board and the restric-
tion of the harness, she was prob-
ably touching fifteen or twenty.
And that was quite a speed, when
you were lying flat on the water
with the spray blowing in your face.

There was a sudden snap. The
board jerked wildly to one side, and
Johnny flew to the other. When he
came to the surface, spluttering, he
found that nothing had broken.
Susie had just popped out of her
harness like a cork out of a cham-
pagne bottle.

Well, one expected these little
technical difficulties on the first
trials. Though it was a long swim
back to shore, where lots of people
would be waiting to pull his leg,
Johnny felt quite content. He had
acquired a new mastery over the
sea, that would allow him to roam
the reef with far greater ease; and
he had invented a new sport that
would one day bring pleasure to
thousands of men and dolphins
alike.

P rofessor Kazan was delighted
when he heard of Johnny’s in-
vention. It fell neatly into line with
his own plans. Those plans were
still rather vague, but they were be-
ginning to take shape. In another
few weeks he would be able to go
to his Advisory Committee with
some ideas that would really make
it sit up.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 12S

The Professor was not one of
those scientists — like some pure
mathematicians — who are un-
happy if their work turns out to be
of practical value. Though he would
be quite content to study the dol-
phin language for the rest of his
life, without attemping to use his
knowledge, he knew that the time
had come to apply it. The dolphins
themselves had forced his hand.

He still had little idea what
could, or even what should, be done
about the killer whale problem.
But he knew very well that if the
dolphins expected to get much help
from mankind, they would have to
prove that they could do something
in return.

As far back as the 1960’s, Dr.
John Lilly, the first scientist to
attempt communication with dol-
phins, had suggested ways in which
they might cooperate with man.
They could rescue survivors from
shipwrecks — as they had demon-
strated with Johnny — and they
could help immeasurably in extend-
ing knowledge of the oceans. They
must know of creatures never seen
by man, and might even settle the
still-unsolved mystery of the Great
Sea Serpent. If they would help
fishermen on a large scale, as they
had done occasionally on a small
one, they might play an important
role in feeding the Earth’s six bil-
lion hungry mouths.

All these ideas were worth in-
vestigating, and Professor Kazan
had some new ones of his own.
There was not a wreck in the
world’s oceans that dolphins could
not locate and examine, down to

126 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
their ultimate diving depth of at
least a thousand feet. Even when
a ship had been broken up cen-
turies ago and covered with mud
or coral, they could still spot it.
They had a wonderfully developed
sense of smell — or rather of taste
— and could detect faint traces of
metal, oil or wood in the water.
Dolphin trackers, sniffing like
bloodhounds across the sea-bed,
might revolutionize marine archae-
ology. Professor Kazan sometimes
wondered, a little wistfully, if they
could be trained to follow the scent
of gold. . .

When he was ready to test some
of his theories, the Flying Fish
sailed north, carrying Einar, Peggy,
Susie and Sputnik in newly installed
tanks. She also carried a good deal
of special equipment. But she did
not, to his bitter disappointment,
carry Johnny. OSCAR had forbid-
den it.

“I’m sorry, Johnny,” said the Pro-
fessor, glumly examining the typed
card that the computer had flicked
at him. “You’ve A for Biology, A
minus for Chemistry, B plus for
Physics, and only B minus for Eng-
lish, Mathematics and History
That really isn’t good enough. How
much time do you spend diving?”

“1 didn’t go out at all yesterday,”
Johnny answered evasively.

“Since it never stopped raining.
I’m not surprised. I’m thinking of
the average day.”

“Oh, a couple of hours.”

“Morning and afternoon. I’m
quite sure. Well, OSCAR has work-
ed out a new schedule for you,
concentrating on your bad subjects.

I’m afraid you’ll slip back even fur-
ther if you come cruising with us.
We’ll be gone two weeks, and you
can’t afford to lose any more time.”
And that was that. It was no
good arguing, even if he dared, for
he knew that the Professor was
right. In some ways, a coral island
was the worst place in the world
to study. . .

I t was a long two weeks be-
fore the Flying Fish came
back, after making several stops at
the mainland. She had gone as far
north as Cooktown, where the
great Captain Cook had landed in
1770 to repair his damaged En-
deavour.

From time to time news of the
expedition’s progress came over the
radio. But Johnny did not hear the
full story until Mick reported to
him on his return. The fact that
Mick had gone on the voyage was
a great help to Johnny’s studies, for
there was no one to lure him away
from his tutors and teaching ma-
chines. He made remarkable pro-
gress in that two weeks. The Pro-
fessor was very pleased.

The first souvenir of the trip
that Mick showed Johnny was a
cloudy-white stone, slightly egg-
shaped, and the size of a small pea.

“What is it?” asked Johnny, un-
impressed.

“Don’t you know?” said Mick,
“It’s a pearl. And quite a good one.”
Johnny still didn’t think much of
it, but had no desire to hurt Mick’s
feelings — or to show his ignorance.

“Where did you find it?” he
asked.

“I didn’t. Peggy got it from
eighty fathoms in the Marlin Deep.
No diver’s ever worked there. It’s
too dangerous, even with modern
gear. But once Uncle Henry went
down in shallow water and showed
them what silver-lip oysters were
like, Peggy and Susie and Einar
did the rest. The Profif says it’ll pay
for this trip.”

“What — this pearl?”

“No, stupid, the shell. It’s still
the best stuff for buttons and knife
handles, and the oyster farms can’t
supply enough of it. The Proff be-
lieves one could run a nice little
pearl shell industry with a few hun-
dred trained dolphins.”

“Did you find any wrecks?”
“About twenty, though most of
them were already marked on the
Admiralty charts. But the big ex-
periment was with the fishing trawl-
ers out of Gladstone. We managed
to drive two schools of tuna right
into their nets.”

“I bet they were pleased.”

“Well, not as much as you might
think. They wouldn’t believe the
dolphins did it. Tlxey claimed it was
done by their own electric control
fields and sotmd-baits. We know
better, and we’ll prove it when we
get some more dolphins trained.
Then we’ll be able to drive fish
just where we like.”

Suddenly Johnny remembered
what Professor Kazan had said to
him about dolphins, at their very
first meeting: “They have more

freedom than we can ever know
on land. They don’t belong to any-
one, and I hope they never will.”
Were they now about to lose that

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 127
freedom, and would the Professor
himself, for all his good intentions,
be the instrument of its loss?

Only the future could tell. But
perhaps dolphins had never been
as free as men had imagined. For
Johnny could not forget the story
of that killer whale, with twenty
of the People of the Sea in its
stomach.

One had to pay for liberty, as
for everything else. Perhaps the
dolphins would be willing to trade
with mankind, exchanging some of
their freedom for security. That
was a choice that many nations had
had to make.

The bargain had not alwa)rs been
a good one.

P rofessor Kazan, of course had
already thought of this and
much more. He was not worried.
He was still experimenting and
collecting information. The de-
cisions had yet to be made, the
treaty between man and dolphin
which he dimly envisaged was still
far in the future. It might not even
be signed in his lifetime — if, in-
deed, one could expect dolphins to
sign a treaty. But why not? Their
mouths were wonderfully dextrous,
as they had shown when collecting
and transporting those hundreds of
silver-lip pearl shells. Teaching dol-
phins to write, or at least to draw,
was another of the Professor’s
long-term projects.

One which would take even long-
er — perhaps centuries — was the
History of the Sea. Professor Kaz-
an had always suspected, and now
he was certain, that dolphins had

128 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
marvellous memories. There had
been a time before the invention
of writing when men had carried
their own past in their brains. Min-
strels and bards memorized millions
of words and passed them on from
generation to generation. The songs
they sang, the legends of gods and
heroes and great battles before the
beginning of history, were a mix-
ture of fact and imagination. But
the facts were there, if one could
dig them out — as, in the nine-
teenth century, Schliemann dug
Troy out of its three thousand years
of rubble, and proved that Homer
spoke the truth.

The dolphins also had their story-
tellers, though the Professor had
not yet contacted one. Einar had
been able to repeat, in rough out-
line, some of their tales, which he
had heard in his youth. Professor
Kazan’s translations had convinced
him that these dolphin legends con-
tained a wealth of information that
could be found nowhere else. They
went back earlier than any human
myths or folk-tales, for some of
them contained clear references to
the Ice Ages — and the last of
those was seventeen thousand
years ago.

And there was one tale so extra-
ordinary that Professor Kazan had
not trusted his own interpretation
of the tape. He had given it to Dr.
Keith and asked him to make an
independent analysis.

It had taken Keith, who was
nothing like as good at translating,
nearly a month to make some sense
of the story. Even then, he was so
reluctant to give his version that

Professor Kazan practically had to
drag it out of him.

“It’s a very old legend,” he began.
“Einar repeats that several times.
And it seems to have made a great
impression on the dolphins, for
they emphasize that nothing like it
ever happened before or after-
wards.

“As I understand it, there was a
school of dolphins swimming at
night off a large island, when it
suddenly became like day and ‘the
sun came down from the sky.’ Tm
quite sure of that phrase. The ‘sun’
landed in the water and went out;
at least, it became dark again. But
there was an enormous object float-
ing on the sea — as long as 128
dolphins. Am I right so far?”

Professor Kazan nodded.

“I agree with everything except
the number. I made it 256, but
that’s not important. The thing was
big, there’s no doubt of that.”

D olphins, the Professor had dis-
covered, counted on a scale
of two. This was just what one
might expect, for they had only
two “fingers” or flippers to count
with. Their words for 1, 10, 100 were
like 2, 4, 8 in man’s decimal nota-
tion. So to them, 128 and 256
were nice round numbers, signify-
ing approximations, not exact
measurements.

“The dolphins were frightened,
and kept away from the thing,” con-
tinued Dr. Keith. “As it lay in the
water, it made strange noises.
Einar imitates some of them. To
me they sound like electric motors
or compressors at work.”

Professor Kazan nodded his
agreement, but did not interrupt.

“Then there was a tremendous
explosion and the sea became boil-
ing hot. Everyone within 1024, or
even 2048, lengths of the object
was killed. It sank quickly, and
there were more explosions as it
went down.

“Even the dolphins who escaped
without injury died soon afterward
of an unknown disease. For years,
everyone kept away from the area,
but as nothing else happened, some
inquisitive dolphins went back to
investigate. They found a ‘place of
many caves’ resting on the sea-bed,
and hunted inside it for fish. And
then these later visitors died of the
same strange disease, so now no
one goes near the spot. I think the
main purpose of the story is to act
as a warning.”

“A warning that’s been repeated
for thousands of years,” agreed the
Professor. “And a warning against
what?”

Dr. Keith stirred uneasily in his
chair. “I don’t see any way out,”
he said. “If that legend is based on
fact — and it’s hard to see how
the dolphins could have invented it
— a spaceship landed somewhere
a few thousand years ago. Then its
nuclear engines blew up, poisoning
the sea with radioactivity. It’s a
fantastic theory, but I can’t think
of a better explanation.”

“Why is it fantastic?” asked Pro-
fessor Kazan. “We’re certain now
that there’s plenty of intelligent life
in the universe, so we’d expect oth-
er races to build spaceships. In fact,
it’s been difficult to explain why

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 1J9
they haven’t come to Earth before
now.

“Some scientists consider that we
probably did have visitors in the
past, but they came so many thou-
sands of years ago that there’s no
evidence for it. Well, now we may
have some evidence.”

“What are you going to do about
it?”

“There’s nothing we can do at
the moment. I’ve questioned Einar.
He hasn’t any idea where all this
happened. We must get hold of one
of those dolphin minstrels and re-
cord the complete saga. Let’s hope
that it gives more details. Once we
know the approximate area we
should be able to pin-point the
wreck with geiger counters — even
after ten thousand years. There’s
only one thing I’m afraid of.”

“What’s that?”

“The killer whales may have
swallowed the information first.
And then we’ll never know the
truth.”

XVI

N o visitor to the island had ever
been welcomed with such
mixed feelings. Everyone not out
at sea was gathered around the
pool when the big cargo-’copter
came flying in from the South, all
the way from the Tasmanian Whale
Research Station.

It hovered high above the pool,
the down-blast of its rotors tearing
the surface of the water into fan-
tastic, shifting patterns. Then the
hatches in its belly opened and a
large sling slowly descended. When

130 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
it hit the pool, there was a sudden
eruption, a great flurry of spray
and foam — and the sling was
empty.

But the pool was not. Cruising
around it on a swift voyage of ex-
ploration was the largest and fierc-
est creature ever to visit Dolphin
Island.

Yet at his first sight of the killer
whale, Johnny was a little disap-
pointed. It was smaller than he had
expected, even though it was far
bigger than any dolphin. He men-
tioned his disappointment to Mick,
when the cargo-’copter had depart-
ed and it became possible to speak
once again without shouting.

“It’s a female,” said Mick.
“They’re half the size of the males.
Which means that they’re much
more practical to keep in captivity.
She’ll only eat a hundredweight of
fish a day.”

Despite his natural prejudice,
Johnny had to admit that she was
a handsome creature. Her piebald
coloring — white beneath, black
above, and with a large white patch
behind each eye — gave her a most
striking appearance. These patches
were responsible for the nickname
she soon acquired — Snowy.

Now she had finished inspecting
the pool, and started to survey the
land. She lifted her massive head out
of the water, looked at the crowd
with keen, intelligent eyes and lazily
opened her mouth.

At the sight of those terrible
peg-shaped teeth, there was a re-
spectful murmur from the audience.
Perhaps Snowy knew the impres-
sion she had created, for she yawn-

ed again, even more widely, giving
a still better view of her formidable
dentures. Dolphins have small, pin-
like teeth, intended merely for
grasping fish before they are swal-
lowed whole. These teeth were de-
signed to do the same job as a
shark’s. They could bite clean
through a seal, a dolphin — or a
man.

Now that the island had acquired
a killer whale, everyone wanted to
see what the Professor would do
with her. For the first three days
he left her alone, until she had got
used to her new surroundings and
recovered from the excitement of
the trip. Since she had already been
in captivity for several months, and
was quite used to human beings,
she quickly settled down and ac-
cepted both live and dead fish when
it was given to her.

The task of feeding the whale
was undertaken by Mick’s family,
usually by his father Jo Nauru or
his uncle Stephen, skipper of the
Flying Fish. Though they took on
the job merely to earn some extra
money, they soon became quite
fond of their charge. She was in-
telligent, which everyone had ex-
pected. But she was also good-
natured — which hardly seemed
right for a killer whale. Mick grew
particularly attached to her. She
showed obvious pleasure when he
came near the pool — and disap-
pointment if he left without giving
her anything.

When he was quite sure that
Snowy had settled down and was
taking a healthy interest in life, the
Professor began his first tests. He

played some simple phrases of DcJ-
phin to her through the underwater
hydrophones, and studied her reac-
tions.

t first they were violent.

She charged around the pool in
all directions, looking for the source
of the noise. There was no doubt
that she associated dolphin voices
with food, and thought that dinner
had been served.

It took her only a few minutes
to realize that she had been fooled
and that there weren’t any dolphins
in the pool. After that, she listened
attentively to the sounds that were
played to her, but refused to go
chasing after them. Professor Kaz-
an’s hope that she would reply to
some of the dolphin talk in her own
language was not fulfilled. She re-
mained stubbornly dumb.

Nevertheless, he was making a
little progress in “Orcan,” using
tape-recordings of killer whale
sounds. OSCAR, with his infallible
computer memory, hunted through
the mass of material looking for
words that were already known to
him. He found many. The names
of several fish, for example, were
almost the same in Orcan as in
Dolphin. Probably both languages
— like English and German, or
French and Italian — sprang from
some common ancient origin. Pro-
fessor Kazan hoped so, for it would
greatly simplify his work.

He was not too disappointed by
Snowy’s lack of cooperation. He
had other plans for her, which
could be carried out whether she
cooperated or not. After she had

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 131
been on the island for two weexs,
a team of medical technicians ar-
rived from India and began to in-
stall electronic equipment at the
edge of the pool. When they were
ready the water was drained. The
indignant whale was stranded help-
lessly in the shallows.

The next step involved ten men,
some strong ropes and a massive
wooden framework that had been
designed to hold the whale’s head
clamped in a fixed position. She
was not at all pleased with this.
Nor was Mick, who had to assist
with the project by playing a hose-
pipe over Snowy to prevent her
skin from drying in the sun.

“No one’s going to hurt you, old
girl,” he said reassuringly. “It’ll all
be over in a minute, and you can
start swimming around again.”
Then, to Mick’s alarm, one of
the technicians approached Snowy
with an object that looked like a
cross between a hypodermic needle
and an electric drill. With great
care he selected a spot on the back
of the whale’s head, placed the de-
vice against it and pressed a button.
There was a faint, high-pitched
whine, and the needle sank deep in-
to Snowy’s brain, going through the
thick bone of the skull as effort-
lessly as a hot knife through butter.

T he operation upset Mick muck
more than it did Snowy,
who seemed scarcely aware of tta
pinprick. This would not have sur-
prised anyone with a knowledge of
physiology, but Mick, like most
people, did not know the curious
fact that the brain has no sense of

132 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
feeling. It can be cut or pierced
without any discomfort to its own-
er.

Altogether ten probes were sunk
into Snowy’s brain. Wires were
connected to them, and taken
to a flat, streamlined box that was
clamped to the top of the whale’s
head. The whole operation took
less than an hour. When it was
over the pool was flooded again
and SnoTvy, puffing and blowing,
started to swim lazily back and
forth. She was obviously none the
worse for her experience, though
it seemed to Mick that she looked
at him with the hurt expression of
a person who had been let down
by a trusted friend.

The next day Dr. Saha arrived
from New Delhi. As a member of
the Institute’s Advisory Committee,
he was an old friend of Professor
Kazan’s. He was also a world au-
thority on that most complex of all
organs, the human brain.

“The last time I used this equip-
ment,” said the physiologist, as he
watched Snowy swimming back and
forth in the pool, “it was on an
elephant. Before I’d finished, 1
could control his trunk accurately
enough to type with it.”

“We don’t need that sort of vir-
tuosity here,” Professor Kazan an-
swered. “All I want to do is to con-
trol Snowy’s movements, and to
teach her not to eat dolphins.”

“If my men have put the elec-
trodes in the right area I think I
can promise that. But not immedi-
ately. I’ll have to do some brain-
mapping first.”

TWs “brain-mapping” was slow.

delieate work, requiring great pa- 1
tience and skill. Saha sat for hours |
at his instrument panel, observing
Snowy’s behavior as she dived,
basked in the sun, swam lazily
round the pool or took the fish that
Mick offered her. All the time her
brain was broadcasting like a satel-
lite in orbit, through the radio
transmitter attached to it. The im-
pulses picked up by the probes
were recorded on tape, so that Dr. ‘
Saha could see the pattern of elec-
trieal activity corresponding to any
particular action.

At last he was ready for the
first step. Instead of receiving im- |
pulses from Snowy’s brain, he be- |
gan to feed electric currents into it.

The result was both fascinating I
and uncanny — more like magic I
than science. By turning a knob or |
closing a switch. Dr. Saha could
make the great animal swim to
right or left, describe circles or fig-
ure eights, float motionless in the
center of the pool or carry out any
other movement he wished.
Johnny’s efforts to control Sputnik
and Susie with the communicator,
which had once seemed so impres-
sive, now appeared almost childish.

B ut Johnny did not mind. Susie
and Sputnik were his friends,
and he preferred to leave them
freedom of choiee. If they did
not wish to obey him — as was
often the case — that was their
privilege. Snowy had no alternative.
The electric currents fed into her
brain had turned her into a living
robot, with no will of her own, '
compelled to carry out orders.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 133

134 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

The more that Johnny thought
about this, the more uncomfortable
he became. Could the same control
be applied to men? When he made
inquiries he found that this had in-
deed been done, many times, in
laboratory experiments. Here was
a scientific tool that might be as
dangerous as atomic energy, if used
for evil instead of good.

There was no doubt that Profes-
sor Kazan intended to use it for
good — at least, for the good of
dolphins. But how he intended to
use it still puzzled Johnny. He was
not very much wiser even when
the experiment moved into its next
stage, with the arrival on the island
of a most peculiar object — a life-
sized mechanical dolphin, driven by
electric motors.

It had been built twenty years
ago by a scientist at the Naval Re-
search Laboratories, who couldn’t
understand how dolphins managed
to swim as fast as they did. Ac-
cording to his calculations, their
muscles should not be able to drive
them at much more than ten miles-
an hour. Yet they could cruise
comfortably at twice that speed.

So the scientist had built a model
dolphin and studied its behavior as
it swam up and down, loaded with
instruments. The project had been
a failure — but the model was so
beautifully made, and performed
so well, that no one had the heart
to destroy it even when its designer
had given up in disgust. From time
to time the Lab technicians dusted
it off for public demonstrations. So
the Professor had come to hear of
it.

It would have fooled any human ,
observer. But when it was lowered
into Snowy’s tank, before scores of
fascinated spectators, the result
was an utter anticlimax. The whale
took one contemptuous glance at
the mechanical toy and then ignored
it completely.

“Just what I was afraid of,” said
the Professor, without too much
disappointment. Like all scientists,
he had long ago learned that most
experiments are failures. He was
not ashamed to make a fool of
himself even in public. (After all,
the great Darwin once spent hours
playing the trumpet in a vegetable
garden, to see if sound affected
plant growth.) “She probably heard
the electric motor and knew the
thing was a fake. Well, there’s, no
alternative. We’U have to use real
dolphins as bait.”

“Are you going to call for vol-
unteers?” asked Dr. Saha jokingly.

The joke, however, backfired on
him. Professor Kazan considered
the suggestion carefully, then
nodded his head in agreement.

“I’ll do exactly that,” he said.

XVII

Ct^'T^here’s a general feeling round
A the island,” said Mick, “that
the Proff has gone stark staring
mad.”

“You know that’s nonsense,” re-
torted Johnny, springing to the de-
fense of his hero. “What’s he done
now?”

“He’s been using that brainwave
gadget to control Snowy’s feeding.
He tells me to offer her one kind

of fish, and then Dr. Saha st<^
her from eating it. After he’s given
her several jabs, she doesn’t even
try any more. He calls it ‘condi-
tioning’. Now there are four or five
big jacks swimming round in the
pool, but she won’t look at them.
She’ll eat any other fish, though.”

“Why does that make the Proff
crazy?”

“Well, it’s obvious what he’s up
to. If he can stop Snowy eating
jacks, he can stop her eating dol-
phins. But what good will that be?
There are millions of killer whales.
He can’t condition them all!”

“Whatever the Proff’s doing,”
said Johnny stubbornly, “there’s a
good reason for it. Wait and see.”

“All the same, 1 wish they’d stop
bothering Snowy. I’m afraid it’U
make her bad-tempered.”

That was an odd thing to say
about a killer whale, thought
Johnny.

“I don’t see that that matters very
much,” he said.

Mick grinned rather shamefacedly
and scuffed the ground with his
feet.

“You promise you won’t tell any-
one?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, I’ve been swimming with
her a good deal. She’s more fun
than your little tadpoles.”

Johnny stared at him in utter
amazement, quite ignoring the in-
sult to Susie and Sputnik.

“And you said the Professor was
mad!” he exclaimed, when he had
got his breath back. “You aren’t
pulling my leg again, are you?” he
added suspiciously. By now he

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 195
could usually spot one of Mick’s
jokes, but this time he seemed to
be serious.

Mick shook his head.

“If you don’t believe me, come
down to the pool. Oh, I know it
sounds crazy, but it’s really quite
safe. The whole thing started by
accident. I got careless one day
when I was feeding Snowy. I
slipped on the edge of the pool and
fell in.”

“Phew!” whistled Johnny. “Bet
you thought you’d had it!”

“I sure did. When I came up, I
was looking straight into Snowy’s
mouth.” He paused. “You know, it
isn’t true about recalling your past
life at moments like this. All I
thought about was those teeth. I
wondered if I’d go down in one
piece, or whether she’d bite me in
two.”

“And what happened?” asked
Johnny breathlessly.

“Well, she didn't bite me in two.
She just gave me a gentle nudge
with her nose, as if to say ‘Let’s
be friends.’ And that’s what we’ve
been ever since. If I don’t go swim-
ming with her every day, she gets
very upset. Sometimes it’s not easy
to manage. Because if anyone sees
me they’ll tell the Proff, and that’ll
be the end of it.”

He laughed at Johnny’s expres-
sion, which was a mixture of alarm
and disapproval.

“It’s a lot safer than lion-taming,
and men have been doing that for
years. I get quite a kick out of it,
too. Maybe some day I’ll work up
to the big whales, like a hundred
and fifty ton Blue.”

136 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
"Well, at least one of those
couldn’t swallow you,” said Johnny,
who had learned a good deal about
whales since coming to the island.
“Their throats are too small. They
can only eat shrimps and little
things like that.”

“All right then. What about a
Sperm whale — Moby Dick him-
self? He can swallow a thirty-foot
squid in one gulp.”

As Mick warmed to his theme,
Johnny slowly realized that he was
motivated by straightforward envy.
Even now, the dolphins merely tol-
erated him. They never showed any
of the affectionate delight they
showered upon Johnny. He felt glad
that Mick had at last found a ceta-
cean friend, but wished it had been
a more sensible one.

A s it happened, he never had
a chance of seeing Mick and
Snowy swimming together, for Pro-
fessor Kazan was ready for his next
experiment. He had been working
for days splicing tapes and com-
posing long sentences in Dolphin.
Even now he was not certain if he
could convey the exact meaning he
wanted to. Where his translation
fell down, he hoped that the intel-
ligence of the dolphins would
bridge the gap.

He often wondered what they
thought of his conversation, built
up of words from many different
sources. Each sentence he broad-
cast into the water must sound as
if there were a dozen or more dol-
phins, each taking his turn to speak
a few words in a different accent.
It must be very puzzling to his lis-

teners, since they could hardly ima-
gine such things as tape recording
and sound editing. The fact that
they made any sense at all out of
his noises was a tribute both to
their intelligence and their patience.

As the Flying Fish pulled away
from her moorings. Professor Kaz-
an was unusually nervous.

“Do you know what I feel like?”
he said to Dr. Keith as they stood
on the foredeck together. “It’s as
if I’d invited my friends to a party,
just to let loose a maneating tiger
among them.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” laughed
Keith. “You’ve given them fair
warning, and you do have the tigo’
under control.”

“I hope,” said the Professor.

Somewhere on board a loud-
speaker announced: “They’re open-
ing the pool gate now. She doesn’t
seem in a hurry to leave.”

Professor Kazan raised a pair of
binoculars and stared back at the
island.

“I don’t want Saha to control her
until we have to,” he said. “Ah, here
she comes.”

Snowy was moving down the
channel from the pool, swimming
very slowly. When it came to an
end and she found herself in open
water, she seemed quite bewilder-
ed. She turned around several times
as if finding her bearings. It was a
typical reaction of an animal — or
a man — that had spent a long
time in captivity and had now been
turned loose into the great outside
world.

“Give her a call,” said the Pro-
fessor. The Dolphin “Come herel”

signal went out through the water.
Even if the phrase was not the same
in Snowy’s own language, it was
one of those that she understood.
She began to swim toward the
Flying Fish, and kept up with the
boat as it drew away from the
island, heading out for the deeper
water beyond the reef.

“I want plenty of room to ma-
neuver,” said Professor Kazan.
“And I’m sure Einar, Peggy and
Co., would prefer it that way —
just in case they have to run.”

“If they come. Perhaps they’ll
have more sense,” Dr. Keith an-
swered doubtfully.

“Well, we’ll know in a few min-
utes. The broadcast has been going
out all morning. Every dolphin for
miles around must have heard it.”
“Look!” said Keith suddenly,
pointing to the west. Half a mile
away, a small school of dolphins
was swimming parallel to the ship’s
course. “There are your volunteers.
It doesn’t look as if they’re in a
hurry to come closer.”

“TTiis is where the fun begins,”
muttered the Professor. “Let’s join
Saha up on the bridge.”

The radio equipment that sent
out the signals to the box on
Snowy’s head, and received her
brain impulses in return, had been
set up near the wheel. This made
the Flying Fish’s little bridge very
crowded, but direct contact be-
tween skipper Stephen Nauru and
Dr. Saha was essential. Both men
knew exactly what to do. Profes-
sor Kazan had no intention of in-
terfering except in case of emer-
gency.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 137
“Snowy’s spotted them,” whisper-
ed Keith.

T here was no doubt of that.

Gone now was the uncertainty
she had shown when first released.
She began to move like a speed-
boat, leaving a foaming wake be-
hind her as she headed straight for
the dolphins.

Understandably, they scattered.
With a guilty twinge, the Professor
wondered just what they were
thinking about him at this moment,
if they were thinking of anything
except Snowy.

She was only thirty feet from one
sleek, plump dolphin when she shot
into the air, landed with a crash in
the water and lay there motionless,
shaking her head in an almost hu-
man manner.

“Two volts, central punishment
area,” said Dr. Saha, taking his fin-
ger off the button. “Wonder if she’ll
try it again?”

The dolphins, doubtless surprised
and impressed by the demonstra-
tion, had reformed a few hundred
yards away. They too were motion-
less in the water, with their heads
all turned watchfully towards their
ancient enemy.

Snowy was getting over her
shock, and beginning to move once
more. This time she swam quite
slowly, and did not head towards
the dolphins at all. It was some
time before they understood.

She was swimming in a wide
circle, with the still motionless dol-
phins at its center. One had to look
closely to see that the circle was
slowly contracting.

138 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“Thinks she can fool us, does
she?” said Professor Kazan admir-
ingly. “1 expect she’ll get as close
as she dares, pretending she’s not
interested, and then make a dash
for it.”

This was exactly what she did do.
The fact that the dolphins stood
their ground for so long was an
impressive proof of their confi-
dence in their human friends, and
yet another demonstration of the
amazing speed at which they learn-
ed. It was seldom necessary to tell
a dolphin anything twice.

The tension grew as Snowy spi-
raled inwards, like an old-time
phonograph pickup tracking in to-
wards the spindle. She was only
forty feet from the nearest and
bravest dolphin when she made her
bid.

A killer whale can accelerate at
an unbelievable speed. But Dr.
Saha was ready, his finger only a
fraction of an inch from the button.
Snovv 7 didn’t have a chance against
him.

She was an intelligent animal —
not quite as intelligent as her
would-be victims, but almost in the
same class. She knew that she was
beaten. When she had recovered
from the second shock, she turned
her back on the dolphins and start-
ed to swim directly away from
them. As she did so. Dr. Saha’s fin-
ger darted towards his panel once
more.

“Hey. what are you up to?” asked
the Flying Fish’s skipper, who had
been watching all this with disap-
proval. Like his nephew Mick, he
did not care to see Snowy pushed

around. “Isn’t she doing what you
want?”

“I’m not punishing her. I’m re-
warding her,” explained Dr. Saha.
“As long as I keep this button down,
she’s having a perfectly wonderful
sensation.”

“I think that’s enough for one
day,” Professor Kazan said. “Send
her back to the pool. She’s earned
her lunch.”

“The same thing tomorrow. Pro-
fessor?” asked the skipper, as Fly-
ing Fish headed for home.

“Yes, Steve. The same every day.
But rU be surprised if we have to
keep it up for more than a week.”

I n fact, after only three days
it was obvious that Snowy had
learned her lesson. It was no longer
necessary to punish her, only to re-
ward her with short spells of elec-
trical ecstasy. The dolphins lost
their fears equally quickly, and at
the end of a week, they and Snowy
were completely at ease with each
other. They would hunt around the
reef together, sometimes cooperat-
ing to trap a school of fish, some-
times foraging independently. A
few of the younger dolphins even
started their usual horseplay
around Snowy, who showed nei-
ther annoyance nor uncontrollable
hunger when they bumped against
her.

On the seventh day, Snowy was
not steered back to her pool after
her morning romp with the dol-
phins.

“We’ve done all we can,” said the
Professor. “Fm going to turn her
loose.”

“Isn’t that taking a risk?” object-
ed Dr. Keith.

“Of course it is. But we’ve got
to take it sooner or later. Unless
we let her run wild again, we’ll
never know how well her condition-
ing lasts.

“And if she does make a snack of
a few dolphins — what then?”

“The rest of them will tell us soon
enough. Then we’ll go out and
round her up again. She’ll be easy
to locate with that radio pack she’s
carrying.”

Stephen Nauru, who had been
listening to the conversation as he
stood at Flying Fish's wheel, looked
back over his shoulder and asked
the question that was worrying
everybody.

“Even if you turned Snowy into
a vegetarian, what about the other
millions of the beasts?”

“We mustn’t be impatient, Steve,”
answered the Professor. “Pm still
only collecting information, and
none of this may ever be the slight-
est use to man or dolphin. But I’m
certain of one thing. The whole
talkative dolphin world must know
of this experiment by now, and
they’ll realize that we’re doing our
best for them. A good bargaining
point for your fishermen.”

“Hmm — I hadn’t thought of that
one.”

“Anyway, if this woria with
Snowy, I’ve a theory that we need
condition only a few killers in any
one area. And only females. They’ll
teach their mates and their off-
spring that if you eat a dolphin,
you’ll get the most horrible head-
ache.”

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 139

Steve was not convinced. Had
he realized the tremendous, irresist-
ible power of electric brain stimu-
lation, he might have been more
impressed.

“I stiU don’t think one vegetarian
could make a tribe of cannibals
mend their ways,” he said.

“You may be quite right,” an-
swered the Professor. “That’s what
I want to find out. Even if the job’s
possible at all, it may not be worth
doing. And even if it’s worth doing,
it may take several lifetimes. But
one has to be an optimist. Don’t
you remember the history of the
Twentieth Century?”

“Which bit of it?” asked Steve.
“There was rather a lot.”

“The only bit that really matters.
Rfty years ago, a great many
people refused to believe that all
the human nations could live in
peace. Well, we know that they
were wrong. If they’d been right,
you and I wouldnit be here. So
don’t be too pessimistic about this
I»oject.”

;^ddenly, Steve burst into laugh-
ter.

“Now what’s so funny?” asked
the Professor.

“I was just thinking,” said Steve,
“that it’s thirty years since they had
an excuse for awarding the Nobel
Peace Prize. If this plan of yours
comes off, you’ll be in the running.”

XVIII

W hile Professor Kazan experi-
mented and dreamed, forces
were gathering in the Pacific
that cared nothing for the hopes

140 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
and fears either of men or dolphins.
Mick and Johnny were among the
first to glimpse their power, one
moonless night out on the reef.

As usual, they were hunting for
crayfish and rare shells. This time
Mick had acquired a new tool to
help him. It was a watertight flash-
light, somewhat larger than normal,
and when Mick switched it on it
produced a very faint blue glow.

But it also produced a powerful
beam of ultraviolet light, invisible
to the human eye. When this fell
upon many varieties of corals and
shells, they seemed to burst into
fire, blazing with fluorescent blues
and golds and greens in the dark-
ness. The invisible beam was a
magic wand, revealing objects that
were otherwise hidden, and that
could not be seen even by ordinary
light. Where the sand had been dis-
turbed by a burrowing mollusc, for
example, the ultraviolet beam be-
trayed the tiny furrow — and Mick
had another victim.

Underwater the effect was aston-
ishing. When the boys dived in the
coral pools near the edge of the
reef, the dim blue light sliced ahead
for fantastic distances. They could
see corals fluorescing a dozen yards
away, like stars or nebulae in the
deeps of space. The natural lumi-
nosity of the sea, beautiful and
striking though it was, could not
compare with this.

Fascinated by their wonderful
new toy, Mick and Johnny dived
longer than they had intended.
When they prepared to go home,
they found that the weather had
changed.

Untfl now, the night had been
calm and still, the only sound the
murmur of the waves, lazily rolling
against the reef. But in the last
hour a wind had come up, blowing
in fitful gusts. The voice of the sea
had acquired an angrier, more de-
termined note.

Johnny saw the thing first, as he
was climbing out of the pool. Be-
yond the reef, at a distance that
was quite impossible to judge, a
faint light was moving slowly across
the waters. For a moment he won-
dered if it could be a ship. Then
he realized that it was too blurred
and formless, like a luminous fog.

“Mick,” he whispered urgently,
“what’s that, out there at sea?”

Mick’s answer was not reassur-
ing. He gave a low whistle of as-
tonishment, and moved to Johnny as
if for protection.

Almost unable to believe their
eyes, they watched as the mist
gathered itself together, became
brighter and more sharp-edged and
climbed higher and higher in the
sky. Within a few minutes it was no
longer a faint glow in the darkness.
It was a pillar of fire walking upon
the face of the sea.

It filled them both with super-
stitious awe — with the fear of the
unknown, which men will never
lose, because the wonders of the
universe are without end. Their
minds were full of wild explanation,
fantastic theories — and then Mick
gave a relieved though rather shak-
en laugh.

“I know what that is,” he said.
“It’s only a water-spout. I’ve seen
them before, but never at night.”

L ike many mysteries, the ex-
planation was simple — once
you knew it. But the wonder re-
mained. The boys stared in fascina-
tion at the spinning column of wa-
ter as it sucked up billions of the
sea’s luminous creatures and scat-
tered them into the sky. It must
have been many miles away, for
Johnny could not hear the roar of
its passage over the waves. Present-
ly it vanished in the direction of the
mainland.

When the boys had recovered
from their astonishment, the in-
coming tide had risen to their knees.

“If we don’t get a move on, we’ll
have to swim for it,” said Mick.
Then he added thoughtfully, as he
splashed off towards the island. “I
don’t like the look of that thing.
It’s a sign of bad weather. Bet you
ten to one we’re in for a big blow.”
How true that was, they began
to realize by next morning. Even
if one knew nothing about meteoro-
logy, the picture on the TV screen
was terrifying. A great whirlpool
of cloud, a thousand miles across,
covered all the western Pacific. As
seen from the weather satellite’s
cameras, looking down upon it
from far out in space, it appeared
to be quite motionless. But that was
only because of its size. If one
watched carefully, one could see
after a few minutes that the spiral
bands of cloud were sweeping swift-
ly across the face of the globe. The
winds that drove them were moving
at up to a hundred and fifty miles
an hour; for this was the greatest
hurricane to strike the Queensland
coast in a generation.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 141

On Dolphin Island, no one
wandered very far from a TV
screen. Every hour, revised fore-
casts came t^ugh from the com-
puters that were predicting the pro-
gress of the storm, but there was
little change during the day. Mete-
orology was now an exact science.
The weathermen could state with
confidence what was going to hap-
pen — though they could not, as
yet, do much about it.

The island had known many oth-
er storms, and the prevailing mood
was excitement and alertness, rath-
er than alarm. Luckily, the tide
would be out when the hurricane
reached its peak, so there was no
danger of waves sweeping over the
island — as had happened else-
where in the Pacific.

All through the day, Johnny was
helping with the safety precautions.
Nothing movable could be left in
the open. Windows had to be
boarded over, boats drawn up as
far as possible on the beadi. The
Flying Fish was secured to four
heavy anchors, and to make doubly
certain that she did not move, ropes
were taken from her to a group of
pandanus trees on the island. Most
of the fishermen, however, were not
much worried about their boats, for
the harbor was on the sheltered
side of the island. The forest would
break the full force of the gale.

The day was hot and oppressive,
without a breath of wind. It scarce-
ly needed the picture on the TV
screen and the steady flow of
weather reports from the east to
tell that Nature was planning one
of her big productions. Moreover,

MX WORLDS Of TOMORROW

though the sky was clear and cloud-
less, the storm had sent its messages
ahead of it. All day long, tre-
mendous waves had been battering
against the outer reef, until the
whole island shook beneath their
impact.

W hen darkness fell, the sky
was still clear and the stars
seemed abnormally brilliant. Johnny
was standing outside the Naurus’
concrete-and-aluminum bungalow,
taking a last look at the sky before
turning in, when he became aware
of a new sound above the thunder
of the waves. It was a sound such
as he had never heard before, as of
a monstrous animal moaning in
pain. Even on that hot, sultry eve-
ning it seemed to chill his blood.
And then he saw something to

the east that broke his nerve com-
pletely. An unbroken wall of utter
blackness was rising up the sky,
climbing visibly even as he watched.
He had heard and seen the onset
of the hurricane, and he did not
wait for more.

“I was just coming to get you,”
said Mick, when Johnny closed the
door thankfully behind him. Those
were the last words that he heard
for many hours.

Seconds later, the whole house
gave a shudder. Then came a noise
which, despite its incredible vio-
lence, was startlingly familiar. For
a moment it took Johnny back to
the very beginning of his adven-
tures; he remembered the thunder
of the Santa Anna jets, only a few
feet beneath him, as he climbed
aboard the hovership, half a world

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 143

away and a seeming lifetime ago.

The roar of the hurricane had
already made speech impossible.
Yet now, unbelievably, the sound
level became even higher, for such
a deluge as Johnny had never ima-
gined was descending upon the
house. The feeble word “rain” could
not begin to describe it. Judging by
the sound that was coming through
roof and walls, a man in the open
would be drowned by the sheer
mass of descending water — if he
was not crushed first.

Yet Mick’s family were taking
all this quite calmly. The younger
children were even gathered round
the TV set, watching the pictures
though they could not hear a word
of the sound. Mrs. Nauru was plac-
idly knitting — a rare accomplish-
ment which she had learned in her

youth, and which normally fasci-
nated Johnny because he had never
seen anyone doing it before. But
now he was too disturbed to watch
the intricate movement of the
needles and the magical transfor-
mation of wool into sock or sweat-
er.

He tried to guess, from the up-
roar aroimd him, what was happen-
ing outside. Surely trees were being
torn up by their roots, boats and
even houses scattered by the gale!
But the howl of the wind and the
deafening, unending crash of water
masked all other sounds. Guns
might be booming outside the door,
and no one would ever hear them.

Johnny looked at Mick for re-
assurance. He wanted some sign
that everything was all right, that
it would soon be over and every-

144 WORIDS OF TOMORROW
thing would be normal. But Mick
shrugged his shoulders, then made
a pantomime of putting on a face-
mask and breathing from an Aqua-
lung mouthpiece, which Johnny did
not think at all funny in the cir-
cumstances.

He wondered what was happen-
ing to the rest of the island. But
somehow nothing seemed real ex-
cept this one room and the people
in it. It was as if they alone existed
now, and the hurricane was launch-
ing its attack upon them person-
ally. So might Noah and his family
have waited for the flood to rise
around them.

Johnny had never thought that
a storm on land could frighten him;
after all, it was “only” wind and
rain. But the demonic fury raving
around the frail fortress in which
they huddled was beyond all his ima-
gination. If he had been told that
the whole island was about to be
blown into the sea, he would have
believed it.

Suddenly, even above the roar of
the storm, there came the sound of
a mighty crash — though whether
it was close at hand, or far away,
it was impossible to tell. At the
same instant the lights went out.

T he moment of utter darkness, at
the height of the storm, was one
of the most terrifying that Johnny
had ever experienced. As long as he
had been able to see his friends, even
if he could not speak to them, he had
felt reasonably safe. Now he was
alone in the screaming night, help-
less before natural forces that he had
never known existed.

Luckily, the darkness lasted only
for a few seconds. Mr. Nauru had
been expecting the worst. He had
an electric lantern ready and when
its light came on, showing every-
thing quite unchanged, Johnny felt
ashamed of his fright.

Even in a hurricane, life con-
tinues. Now that they had lost the
TV, the younger children started
to play with their toys or read pic-
ture books. Mrs. Nauru continued
placidly knitting, while her husband
began to plough through a thick
World Food Organization report
on Australian fisheries, full of
charts, statistics and maps. When
Mick set up a game of checkers,
Johnny did not feel much like chal-
lenging him, but he realized that
it was the sensible thing to do.

So the night dragged on. Some-
times the hurricane slackened for
a moment and the roar of the wind
dropped to a level at which one
could make oneself heard by shout-
ing. But nobody made the effort.
There was nothing to say; and very
quickly the noise returned to its
former volume.

Around midnight, Mrs. Nauru
got up, disappeared into the kitchen
and came back a few minutes later
with a jug of hot coffee, half a
dozen tin mugs and an assorted
collection of cakes. Johnny won-
dered if this was the last snack he
would ever eat. Nevertheless he en-
joyed it, and then went on losing
games to Mick.

Not until four in the morning, a
bare two hours before dawn, did
the fury of the storm begin to
abate.

Slowly its strength ebbed, until
presently it was no more than an
ordinary howling gale. At the same
time they no longer seemed to be
beneath a waterfall. Around five,
there were a few isolated gusts, as
violent as anything that had gone be-
fore; but they were the hurricane’s
dying spasms.

By the time the sun rose over
the battered island, it was possible
to venture out of doors.

Johnny had expected disaster. He
was not disappointed. As he and
Mick scrambled over the dozens of
fallen trees that blocked once famil-
iar paths, they met the other island-
ers wandering around, like the
dazed inhabitants of a bombed city.
Many of them were injured, with
heads bandaged or arms in slings.
But by good planning and good
luck there had been no serious
casualties.

The real damage was to proper-
ty. All the power lines were down,
but they could be quickly replaced.
Much more serious was the fact
that the electric generating plant
was ruined. It had been wrecked
by a tree that had not merely fallen,
but walked end over end for a hun-
dred yards and then smashed into
the power building like a giant club.
Even the standby Diesel plant had
been involved in the catastrophe.

There was worse to come. Some-
time during the night, defying all
predictions, the wind had shifted
round to the west and attacked the
island from its normally sheltered
side. Of the fishing fleet, half had
been sunk, while the other half had
been hurled up the beach and

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 145
smashed into firewood. The Flying
Fish lay on her side, partly sub-
merged. She could be salvaged, but
it would be weeks before she sailed
again.

Yet despite all the ruin and

havoc, no one seemed too de-
pressed. At first Johnny was aston-
ished by this; then he slowly came
to understand the reason. Hurri-

canes were one of the basic, un-
avoidable facts of life on the Great
Barrier Reef. Anyone who chose to
make his home here must be pre-
pared to pay the price. If he
couldn’t take it, he had a simple
remedy; he could always move
somewhere else.

P rofessor Kazan put it in a differ-
ent way, when Johnny and

Mick found him examining the
blown-down fence around the dol-
phin pool.

“Perhaps this has put us back six
months,” he said. “But we’ll get over
it. Equipment can always be re-

placed — men and knowledge can’t.
And we’ve lost neither of those.”
“What about OSCAR?” Mick
asked.

“Dead — until we get power
again, but all his memory circuits
are intact.”

That means no lessons for a
while, thought Johnny. The ill wind
had blown some good, after all.

But it had also blown more harm
than anyone yet appreciated — ex-
cept Nurse Tessie. That large and
efficient woman was now looking,
with utter dismay, at the soaking
wreckage of her medical stores.
Cuts, bruises, even broken limbs

146 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
she could deal with, as she had
been doing ever since dawn. But
anything more serious was now be-
yond her control. She did not even
have an ampoule of penicillin that
she could trust.

In the cold and miserable after-
math of the storm, she could count
on several chills and fevers, and
perhaps more serious complaints.
Well, she had better waste no time
radioing for fresh supplies.

Quickly, she made a list of the
drugs which, she knew from earlier
experience, she would be needing
in the next few days. Then she hur-
ried to the Message Center, and
received a second shock.

Two disheartened electronics
technicians were toasting their sold-
ering irons on a Primus stove.
Around them was a shambles of
wires and broken instrument racks,
impaled by the branch of a pan-
danus tree that had come straight
through the roof.

“Sorry, Tess,” they said. “If we
can raise the mainland by the end
of the week, it’ll be a miracle. We’re
back to smoke signals, as of now.”

Tessie thought that over.

“1 can’t take any chances,” she
said. “We’ll have to send a boat
across.”

Both technicians laughed bitterly.

“Hadn’t you heard?” said one.
"Flying Fish is upside down, and
all the other boats are in the middle
of the island, parked in the trees.”

As Tessie absorbed this slightly,
but only slightly, exaggerated re-
port, she felt more helpless than
she had ever been since that time
Matron had ticked her off as a raw

probationer. She could only hope
that everyone would keep healthy
until communications were re-
stored.

But by evening, she had attended
to one injured foot that looked gan-
grenous; and then the Professor,
pale and shaky, came to see her.

“Tessie,” he said, “you’d better
take my temperature. I think I’ve
got fever.”

Before midnight, she was sure
that it was pneumonia.

XIX

T he news that Professor Kaz-
an was seriously ill, and that
there was no way of treating him
adequately, caused more dismay
than all the damage wrought by the
hurricane. And it hit no one harder
than Johnny.

Though he had never stopped to
think about it, the island had be-
come the home he had never
known, and the Professor a re-
placement for the father he could
scarcely remember. Here he felt
the security which he had longed
for and unconsciously striven to
find. Now that security was threat-
ened. No one could get a message
across a hundred miles of sea —
in this age when moons and planets
talked to one another.

Only a hundred miles! Why, he
himself had traveled a greater dis-
tance, when he first came to the
island. . .

And with that memory, he sud-
denly knew, beyond all doubt or
argument, exactly what he had to
do. Dolphins had brought him here.

Now they could carry him the rest
of the way.

He was sure that Susie and Sput-
nik, taking turns to pull the surf-
board, could get him across that
hundred miles of water in less than
twelve hours. This would be the
payoff for all the days they had
spent together, hunting and explor-
ing along the edge of the reef. With
the two dolphins beside him. he
felt absolutely safe in the sea. They
knew all his wishes, even without
the use of the communicator.

Johnny looked back at some of
the trips they had made together.
With Susie towing Mick’s large
board, and Sputnik towing Johnny
on a smaller one, they had once
crossed to the adjacent reef on
Wreck Island, which was about ten
miles away. The journey had taken
just over an hour — and the dol-
phins had not been hurrying.

But how could he convince any-
one that this was not a crazy, sui-
cidal stunt? Only Mick would un-
derstand. The other islanders would
certainly stop him, if they had any
idea of what he was planning. Well,
he would have to get away before
they knew.

Mick’s reaction was just what he
had expected. He took the plan per-
fectly seriously, but was not at all
happy about it.

“I’m sure it can be done,” he said.
“But you can’t go by yourself.”

Johnny shook his head.

“I’ve thought of that,” he an-
swered. For the first time in his
life, he felt glad that he was small.
“Remember those races we’ve had?
How many have you won? You’re

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 147
too big — ^you’d only slow us down.”

That was perfectly true, and
Mick could not deny it. Even the
more powerful Susie could not tow
him as fast as Sputnik could tow
Johnny.

Defeated on this point, Mick
tried a new argument.

“It’s over twenty-four hours since
we’ve been cut off from the main-
land. Before long, someone’s bound
to fly over to see what’s happened,
since they’ve had no word from us.
You may risk your neck for noth-
ing.”

“That’s true,” admitted Johnny.
“But whose neck is more important
— mine or Professor Kazan’s? If
we keep on waiting, it may be too
late. Besides, they’ll be pretty busy
on the mainland after that storm.
It may be a week before they work
round to us.”

(C'"T^ell you what,” said Mick.

A “We’ll get organized, and if
there’s no sign of help, and the Pro-
fessor’s stUl bad by the time you’re
ready to go, then we’U talk it over
again.”

“You won’t speak to anyone?”
said Johnny anxiously.

“Of course not. By the way,
where are Susie and Sputnik? Are
you sure you can find them?”

“Yes. They were around the jetty
earlier this morning, looking for us.
They’ll come quickly enough when
I push the HELPI button.”

Mick began to count items off
oo his fingers.

“You’ll want a flask of water —
one of those flat plastic ones —
some concentrated food — a com-

148 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
pass — your usual diving gear — I
can’t think of anything else. Oh, a
flashlight. You won’t be able to do
the whole trip in the daytime.”

“I was going to leave around
midnight. Then I’ll have the moon
for the first half of the way, and
will hit the coast during daylight.”

“You seem to have worked it out
pretty well,” said Mick with grudg-
ing admiration. He still hoped that
the attempt would be unnecessary,
and that something would turn up.
But if it did not, he would do all
that he could to launch Johnny to-
wards the distant mainland.

Because both boys, like everyone
else on the island, had to help with
urgent repair work, they could do
little until nightfall. Even after
darkness came, there were some
jobs that continued by the soft light
of kerosene lanterns, and it was not
until very late in the evening that
Johnny and Mick were able to com-
plete their arrangements.

Luckily, no one saw them as they
brought the little surfboard down
to the harbor and launched it
among the overturned and shatter-
ed boats. Equipment and harness
were all attached. Only the dolphins
were needed now — and the final,
unavoidable reason for going.

Johnny handed the Communica-
tor bracelet to Mick.

“See if you can call them,” he
said. “I’m running up to the hos-
pital. I won’t be more than ten
minutes.”

Mick took the bracelet, and
waded out into deeper water. The
fluorescent letters were clearly vis-
ible on the tiny keyboard, but he

did not need them, for like Johnny
he could use the instrument blind-
fold.

He sank down into the warm,
liquid darkness and lay on the coral
sand. For a moment he hesitated.
If he wished, there was still time
to stop Johnny. Suppose he did
nothing with the Communicator,
and then said that the dolphins had
never turned up? The chances were
that they wouldn’t come, anyway.

No, he could not deceive his
friend, even in a good cause, even
to save him from risking his neck.
He could only hope that when
Johnny called at the hospital, he
would hear that the Professor was
now out of danger.

Wondering if he would be sorry
for this all his life, Mick pressed
the HELP! button, and heard the
faint buzzing in the darkness. He
waited fifteen seconds: then pressed
it again — and again.

F or his part, Johnny had no
doubts. As he followed the
beam of his flashlight up the beach,
and along the path to the adminis-
trative center, he knew that he
might be setting foot on Dolphin
Island for the very last time. That,
indeed, he might not live to see
another sunrise. This was a burden
which few boys of his age had had
to bear, but he accepted it willingly.
He did not think of himself as a
hero. He was merely doing his plain
duty. He had been happy here on
the island, and had found a way of
life that gave him everything he
needed. If he wanted to preserve
that way of life, he would now

have to fight for it — and, if neces-
sary, risk losing it.

The small hospital building, in
which he himself had wakened as a
sunburnt castaway a year ago, was
completely silent. Curtains were
drawn on all the windows except
one, from which streamed the yel-
low light of a kerosene lamp.
Johnny could not help glancing in-
to the brightly illuminated room. It
was the office, and Nurse Tessie
was sitting at her desk. She was
writing in a large register or diary,
and she looked completely exhaust-
ed. Several times she put her hands
to her eyes, and Johnny was shaken
to realize that she had been crying.
The knowledge that this huge, ca-
pable woman had been reduced to
tears was proof enough that the
situation was desperate. .Perhaps,
he thought with a sudden sinking
of his heart, he was already too
late.

It was not as bad as that, though
it was bad enough. Nurse cheered
up a little, putting on her profes-
sional face, when he knocked softly
and entered the office. She would
probably have thrown out anyone
else who bothered her at this time
of night, but she had always had a
soft spot for Johnny.

“He’s very ill,” she said in a whis-
per. “With the right drugs, I could
clear it up in a few hours. But as it
is — ” She shrugged her massive
shoulders helplessly, then added,
“It’s not only the Professor; I’ve two
who need anti-tetanus shots.”

“If we don’t get help,” whispered
Johnny, “do you think he’ll pull
through?”

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 149

She did not answer. Her silence
was enough.

Johnny waited no longer. Luck-
ily, she was too tired to notice that
he did not say good night, but good-
by.

When Johnny got back to the
beach, he found that Susie was al-
ready harnessed to the surfboard,
and Sputnik was waiting patiently
beside her.

“They got here in five minutes,”
said Mick. “Gave me a fright too,
when they came up in the darkness.
I wasn’t expecting them so soon.”

Johnny stroked the two wetly
gleaming bodies, and the dolphins
rubbed affectionately against him.
He wondered where and how they
had ridden out the storm, for he
could not imagine any creature
surviving in the seas that must have
raged around the island. There was
a scar behind Sputnik’s dorsal fin
that had not been there before, but
otherwise neither dolphin seemed
any the worse for its experience.

Water-flask, compass, flashlight,
sealed food container, flippers,
facemask, snorkel. Communicator
— Johnny checked them all. Then
he said, “Thanks for everything,
Mick. I’ll be back soon.”

“I still wish I could go with you,”
Mick answered huskily.

“There’s nothing to worry about,”
said Johnny, though he no longer
felt quite so sure. “Sputnik and
Susie will look after me, won’t you?”
He could think of no more to say,
so climbed on to the board, called,
“Let’s go,” and waved to the dis-
consolate Mick as Susie pulled him
out to sea.

150 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

He had barely managed in time,
for there were lanterns moving
down the beach. As he slipped
away into the night, he felt sorry
that he had left Mick to face the
music.

Perhaps from this very beach, a
century and a half ago, Mary Wat-
son had set off in her ill-fated bid
for rescue, floating in that tiny iron
box with her baby and dying serv-
ant. How strange it was that, in
this age of spaceships and atomic
energy and colonies on the planets,
he should be doing almost the same
thing, from the same island!

Yet perhaps it was not so strange
after all. If he had never heard of
her example, he might not have
been inspired to repeat it.

And if he succeeded, she would
not have died in vain, on that lone-
ly reef forty miles to the north.

XX

Johnny was content to let the
" dolphins do all the navigating,
until he was well clear of the reef.
Their wonderful sonar system, fill-
ing the darkened sea with echoes
beyond his hearing, told them ex-
actly where they were. It revealed
to them all the obstacles, and all
the larger fish, for a hundred feet
around. Millions of years before
men invented radar, dolphins (as
well as bats) had perfected it in al-
most every detail. True, they used
sound waves and not radio waves,
but the principle was the same.

The sea was choppy, but not too
rough. Sometimes spray would
break over him, and occasionally

the board would nose down into a
wave. But most of the time he
skimmed comfortably across the
surface. It was difficult to judge
his speed in the darkness. When he
switched on his flashlight the water
seemed to be racing past him at a
tremendous rate, but he knew that
it could not be much more than
ten miles an hour.

Johnny looked at his watch. Fif-
teen minutes had already passed,
and when he glanced back there
was no sign of the island. He had
expected to see a few lights, but
even these were gone. Already he
was miles from land, racing through
the night on a mission that would
have terrified him only a year
ago. Yet he was unafraid — or at
least he could control his fears, for
he knew that he was with friends
who would protect him from harm.

It was time he set his course.
Navigation was no problem. If he
traveled even approximately west
he was bound to hit the thousands
of miles of Australian coastline
sooner or later. When he glanced
at his compass he saw, to his sur-
prise, that there was no need to
make any change of direction. Susie
was alre^y on course, heading due
west.

It was the clearest and most
direct proof of her intelligence that
he had ever received. Mick’s
“Helpl” signal had been enough.
There was no need to point to the
one direction in which help could
be found. She already knew it, as
the Queensland coastline.

But was she traveling as swiftly
as she could? Johnny wondered

whether to leave that to her, or
whether to impress upon her the
urgency of the mission. Finally he
decided that it would do no harm
to press the FAST button.

He felt the board jerk slightly
when he did so, but could not tell
if there had been any appreciable
increase in speed. The hint should
be sufficient. He was sure now that
Susie knew exactly what she was
doing, and was operating at her
best cruising speed. If he insisted
that she go faster, she would only
tire herself.

The night was very dark, for the
moon had not yet risen, and low
clouds left behind by the storm hid
almost all the stars. Even the usual
phosphorescence of the sea was ab-
sent. Perhaps the luminous crea-
tures of the deep were still recover-
ing from the impact of the hurri-
cane, and would not shine again un-
til they had got over their shock.
Johnny would have welcomed their
gentle radiance, for there were mo-
ments when he felt scared by this
headlong race through pitch-black
darkness. Suppose a huge wave —
or even a rock — was rearing in-
visibly ahead of him, as he skimmed
along with his nose only three
inches from the water? Despite his
faith in Susie, these fears crept up
on him from time to time, and he
had to fight them down.

I t was a wonderful moment when
he saw the first pale glow of
moonrise in the east. The clouds
were still thick, but though he
could not see the Moon itself,
its reflected light began to grow

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 151
around him. It was too faint to
show any details, but merely to see
the horizon made a great differ-
ence to his peace of mind. Now he
could tell with his own eyes that
there were no rocks or reefs ahead.
Susie’s underwater senses would be
far keener than his straining vision,
but at least he was no longer com-
pletely helpless.

Now that they were in deeper
water, the annoying, choppy wave-
lets over which the board had
bumped at the beginning of its
journey had been left behind. In-
stead, they were skimming across
long, rolling waves, hundreds of
feet from crest to crest. It was
hard to judge their height. From
Johnny’s prone position, they
doubtless seemed much bigger than
they really were. Half the time Su-
sie would be climbing up a long,
gentle slope. Then the board would
hover for an instant on the summit
of the moving hiU of water; then
there would be the swoop down in-
to the valley, and the whole se-
quence would begin again. Johnny
had long since learned to adjust
himself to the climb and the swoop,
shifting his weight automatically
along the board. Like riding a bi-
cycle, he did it without conscious
thought.

Suddenly the Moon’s waning
crescent broke through the clouds.
For the first time, Johnny could
see the miles of rolling water
around him, the great waves
marching endlessly into the night.
Their crests gleamed like silver in
the moonlight, making their troughs
all the blacker by the contrast. The

152 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
surfboard’s dive down into the
dark valleys, and its slow climb to
the peaks of the moving hills, was
a continual switching from night to
day, day to night.

Johnny looked at his watch. He
had been travelling about four
hours. That meant, with any luck,
forty miles, and it also meant that
dawn could not be far away. That
would help him to fight off sleep.
Twice he had dozed, fallen off the
board and found himself splutter-
ing in the sea. It was not a pleasant
feeling, floating there in the dark-
ness while he waited for Susie to
circle back and pick him up.

Slowly the eastern sky lightened.
As he looked back, waiting for the
first sight of the sun, Johnny re-
membered the dawn he had watch-
ed from the wreckage of the Santa
Anna. How helpless he had felt
then, and how mercilessly the trop-
ical sun had burned him! Now he
was calm and confident, though he
had reached the point of no return
with fifty miles of sea separating
him from land in either direction.
And the sun could no longer harm
him, for it had already tanned his
skin a deep golden brown.

The swift sunrise shouldered
away the night, and as he felt the
warmth of the new day on his back,
Johnny pressed the STOP button.
It was time to give Susie a rest,
and a chance to go hunting for her
breakfast. He slipped off the surf-
board, swam forward, loosened her
harness — and away she went,
jumping joyfully in the air as she
was released. There was no sign of
Sputnik. He was probably chasing

fish somewhere else, but would
come when he was called.

Johnny pushed up his facemask,
which he had worn all night to keep
the spray out of his eyes, and sat
astride the gently rocking board. A
banana, two meat roils and a sip of
orange juice was all he needed to
satisfy him. The rest could wait un-
til later in the day. Even if every-
thing went well, he still had five or
six hours of traveling ahead of him.

He let the dolphins have a fif-
teen-minute break while he relax-
ed on the board, rising and falling
in the swell of the waves. Then he
pressed the call button, and waited
for them to return.

After five minutes, he began to
get a little worried. In that time
they could swim three miles. Surely
they had not gone so far away?
Then he relaxed as he saw a fa-
miliar dorsal fin cutting through
the water towards him.

A second later, he sat up with
a jerk. That fin was certainly fa-
miliar, but it was not the one he
was expecting. It belonged to a
killer whale.

T hose few moments as John-
ny saw sudden death bearing
down at thirty knots seemed to last
forever. Then a faintly reassuring
thought struck him, and he dared
to hope. The whale had almost cer-
tainly been attracted by his signal;
could it possibly be — ?

It was. As the huge head sur-
faced only a few feet away, he
recognized the streamlined box of
the control unit, still anchored se-
curely in the massive skull.

"You gave me quite a shock.
Snowy,” he said, when he had re-
covered his breath. “Please don’t do
that again.”

Even now, he had no guarantee
of safety. According to the last re-
ports, Snowy was still on an exclu-
sive diet of fish; at least, there had
been no complaints from the dol-
phins. But he was not a dolphin.
Nor was he Mick.

The board rocked violently as
Snowy rubbed herself against it,
and it was all that Johnny could
do to stop himself from being
thrown into the water. But it was a
gentle rub — the gentlest that fif-
teen feet of kiUer whale could man-
age — and when she turned to re-
peat the maneuver on the other
side, Johnny felt a good deal bet-
ter. There was no doubt that she
only wanted to be friendly, and he
breathed a silent but fervent “thank
you” to Mick.

Still a little shaken, Johnny
reached out and patted her as she
slid by, so silently and effortlessly.
Her skin had the typical, rubbery
dolphin feel — which, of course,
was natural enough. It was easy to
forget that this terror of the seas
was just another dolphin, only on a
slightly bigger scale.

She seemed to appreciate John-
ny’s rather nervous stroking of her
flank, for she came back for more.

“I guess you must be lonely, all
by yourself,” said Johnny sympathet-
ically. Then he froze in utter horror.

Snowy wasn’t by herself and she
had no need to be lonely. Her boy
friend was making a leisurely ap-
proach; all thirty feet of him.

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 153
Only a male killer had that enor-
mous dorsal fin, taller than a man.
The huge black triangle, like the
sail of a boat, came slowly up to
the surfboard upon which Johnny
was sitting, quite unable to move.
All he could think was. You’ve had
no conditioning — no friendly swim-
ning with Mick.

This was far and away the larg-
est animal that he had ever seen.
It looked as big as a boat, and
Snowy had suddenly shrunk to dol-
phin-size by contrast. But she was
the master — or mistress — of the
situation, for as her huge mate pa-
trolled slowly round the board, she
circled on an inner orbit, keeping
always between him and Johnny.

Once he stopped, reared his head
a good six feet out of the water,
and stared straight at Johnny across
Snowy’s back. There was hunger,
intelligence and ferocity in those
eyes — or so it seemed to Johnny’s
heightened imagination — but no
trace of friendliness. And all the
time he was spiralling in towards
the surfboard. In a very few min-
utes he would be squeezing Snowy
against it.

S nowy, however, had other ideas.

When her companion was only
ten feet away, and filling the
whole of Johnny’s field of view, she
suddenly turned on him and gave
him a nudge amidships. Johnny
could hear the “thump” clearly
through the water. The impact
would have been enough to stave
in the side of a small boat.

The big whale took the gentle
hint, and to Johnny’s vast relief be-

154 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
gan to move further outwards. Fif-
ty feet away there was another
slight disagreement, and another
thump. That was the end of it.
Within minutes, Snowy and her es-
cort had vanished from sight, head-
ing due north. As he watched them
go, Johnny realized that he had
just seen a ferocious monster con-
verted into a hen-pecked husband,
forbidden to take snacks between
meals.

The snack concerned was devout-
ly grateful.

For a long time Johnny sat on
the board, trying to regain control
of his nerves. He had never been
so scared in his life. He was not
ashamed of it, for he had had
plenty to be scared about. But at
last he stopped looking over his
shoulder every few seconds to , see
what was coming up from behind,
and began to get organized. The
first order of business was: —
Where were Susie and Sputnik?

There had been no sign of them,
and Johnny was not surprised. Un-
doubtedly, they had detected the
killers, and had wisely kept their
distance. Even if they had trusted
Snowy, they would know better
than to come near her mate.

Had they been scared complete-
ly away, or — horrible thought —
had the killers already caught
them? If they did not return, John-
ny knew that he was finished, fw
he must still be at least forty miles
from the Australian coast.

He was afraid to press the call-
ing button a second time. It might
bring back the killer whales — and
he had no wish to go through that

again, even if he could be sure that
it would have the same happy end-
ing. There was nothing he could do
but sit and wait, scanning the sea
around him for the first sign of a
reasonably sized dorsal fin, not
more than a foot high.

Fifteen endless minutes later.
Sputnik and Susie came swimming
up out of the south. That the killer
whales had disappeared into the
north was probably no coincidence.
They had been waiting for the coast
to clear. Johnny had never been so
pleased to see any humans as he
was to greet the two dolphins. As
he slipped off the board to fix the
harness, he gave them the little pats
and caresses they enjoyed, and
talked to them just as if they could
understand him. As, indeed, they
certainly did, for though they knew
only a few words of English, they
were very sensitive to his tone of
voice. They could always tell when
he was pleased or angry, and now
tiiey must surely share his own feel-
ing of overwdielming relief.

H e tightened the buckles of
Sputnik’s harness, checked
that blowhole and flippers were
clear of the straps, and climbed
back onto the board. As soon as
he was lying flat and properly bal-
anced, Sputnik started to move.

This time, he did not continue
westwards towards Australia. In-
stead, he headed south. “Heyl” said
Johnny. “That’s the wrong direc-
tion!” Then he thought of the killer
whales, and realized that this was
not such a bad idea after all. He
would let Sputnik have his head.

They were going faster than
Johnny had ever travelled on the
board before. Speed so close to the
water was very deceptive, but he
would not be surprised if they were
doing fifteen knots. Sputnik kept it
up for twenty minutes: then, as
Johnny had hoped and expected,
they turned west. With any luck
now, it would be a clear run to
Australia.

From tirne to time he glanced
back to see if they were followed,
but no tall dorsal fin broke the emp-
tiness behind them. Once, a big
manta ray leaped clear out of the
sea a few hundred yards away,
hung in the air for a second like an
enormous black bat, then fell back
with a crash that could have been
heard for miles. It was the only
sign of the ocean’s teeming life that
he saw on the second lap of his
journey.

Towards mid-morning. Sputnik
began to slacken, but continued to
pull gamely. Johnny was anxious
not to halt again until the coast was
in sight. Then he intended to
switch back to Susie, who would
have had a good rest by that time.
If his guesses of speed were cor-
rect, Australia could not be much
more than ten miles away, and
should be appearing at any mo-
ment.

He remembered how he had first
glimpsed Dolphin Island, in circum-
stances which were so similar —
yet so different. It had been like a
small cloud on the horizon, trem-
bling in the heat haze. What he was
approaching now was no island, but
a vast continent with a coastline

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 155
thousands of miles long. Even the
worst navigator could hardly miss
such a target — and he had two of
the best. He had not the slightest
worry on this score, but he was
getting a little impatient.

His first glimpse of the coast
came when an unusually large roller
lifted the surfboard. He glanced up,
without thinking, when he was
poised for a moment on the crest
of the wave. And there, far ahead,
was a line of white, stretching the
full length of the horizon. . .

His breath caught in his throat,
and he felt the blood pounding in
his cheeks. Only an hour or two
away was safety for himself, and
help for the Professor. His long
sleigh-ride across the ocean was
nearly over.

Thirty minutes later, a bigger
wave gave him a better view of the
coast ahead. And then he knew that
the sea had not yet finished playing
with him; his worst ordeal had still
to come.

XXI

T he hurricane had passed two
days ago, but the sea still re-
membered it. As the coast came
nearer, until Johnny could make out
individual trees and houses and the
faint blue humps of the inland hills,
he saw and heard the tremendous
waves ahead. Their thunder filled
the air. All along the coast, from
north to south, white-capped moun-
tains were moving against the land.
The great waves were breaking a
thousand feet out, as they hit the
shelving beach. Like a man tripping

156 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
and falling, they gained speed as
they toppled, and when they final-
ly crashed they left behind them
smoking clouds of spray.

Johnny looked in vain for a
break, somewhere along those mov-
ing, thundering walls of water. But
as far as he could see — and when
he stood up on the board, he could
see for miles — the whole coastline
was the same. He might waste hours
hunting along it for sheltered bays
or river-mouths where he could
make a safe landfall. It would be
best to go straight through, and to
do it quickly before he lost his
nerve.

He had with him the tool for the
job, but he had never used it. The
hard, flat coral so close to shore
made surfriding impossible at Dol-
phin Island. There was no gentle
underwater slope up which the
breakers could come rolling into
land. But Mick had often talked en-
thusiastically to him about the tech-
nique of “catching a wave,” and it
did not sound too difficult. You
waited out where the waves were
beginning to break, then paddled
like mad when you saw one coming
up behind you. Then all you had to
do was to hang on to the board
and pray that you wouldn’t get
dumped. The wave would do the
rest.

Yes, it sounded simple enough —
but could he manage it? He remem-
bered that silly joke: “Can you play
the violin?” “I don’t know — I’ve
never tried” Failure here could have
much more serious consequences
than a few sour notes.

Half a mile from land, he gave

Susie the signal to hah and un-
buckled her harness. Then, very re-
luctantly, he cut the traces away
from the board. It would not do
to have them whipping around him
when he went barreling through the
surf. He had put a lot of work into
that harness and hated to throw it
away. But he remembered Profes-
sor Kazan’s remark. “Equipment
can always be replaced.” It was a
source of danger now, and it would
have to go.

The two dolphins still swam be-
side him as he paddled towards the
shore, kicking the board along with
his flippered feet, but there was
nothing they could do to help him
now. Johnny wondered if, superb
swimmers though they were, they
could even help themselves in the
boiling maelstrom ahead. Dolphins
were often stranded on beaches
such as this, and he did not want
Susie and Sputnik to run that sort
of risk.

This looked a good place to go
in. The breakers were running par-
allel to the beach without any con-
fusing cross-patterns of reflected
waves. And there were people here,
watching the surf from the tops of
some low sand-dunes. Perhaps they
had seen him already. In any case,
they would be able to help him to
get ashore.

He stood up on the board and
and waved vigorously — no easy
feat, on such an unstable platform.
Yes, they’d seen him. Those distant
figures had suddenly become agi-
tated, and several were pointing in
his direction.

He was ready.

T hen Johnny noticed something
that did not make him at
all happy. Up there on the dunes
were at least a dozen surfboards,
some resting on trailers, some stuck
upright in the sand. All those boards
on land — and not a single one in
the sea! Johnny knew, for Mick had
told him often enough, that the
Australians were the best swim-
mers and surfers in the world.
There they were, waiting hopefully
with all their gear: but they knew
better than to try anything in this
sea. It was not an encouraging
sight for someone about to attempt
his first shoot.

He paddled slowly forward, and
the roaring ahead grew steadily
louder. Until now the waves that
swept past him had been smooth
and unbroken, but now their crests
were flecked with white. Only a
hundred yards in front of him they
would start to topple and fall thun-
dering towards the beach, but here
he was still in the safe no-man’s-
land between the breakers and the
sea. Somewhere a fathom or two
beneath him the advancing waves,
that had marched unhindered
across a thousand miles of the open
Pacific, first felt the tug and drag
of the land. After that, they had
only seconds left to live before they
crashed in tumultuous ruin upon the
beach.

For a long time Johnny rose and
fell at the outer edge of the white
water, studying the behavior of the
waves, noting where they began to
break, feeling their power without
yielding to it. Once or twice he al-
most launched himself forward, but

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 157
instinct or caution held him back.
He knew — his eyes and ears told
him plainly enough — that once he
was committed, there would be no
second chance.

The people on the beach were
becoming more and more excited.
Some of them were waving him
back, and this struck him as very
stupid. Where did they expect him
to go? Then he realized that they
were trying to help. They were
warning him against waves that he
should not attempt to catch. Once,
when he almost started paddling,
the distant watchers waved him
frantically onwards, but he lost his
nerve at the last second. When he
saw the wave that he had missed go
creaming smoothly up the beach,
he knew that he should have taken
their advice. They were the experts.
They understood this coast. Next
time, he would do what they sug-
gested.

He kept the board aimed ac-
curately towards the land, while he
looked back over his shoulder at
the incoming waves. Here was one
that was already beginning to break
as it humped out of the sea; white-
caps of foam had formed all along
its crest. Johnny glanced quickly at
the shore, and caught a glimpse of
dancing figures wildly waving him
onwards. This was it.

He forgot everything else as he
dog-paddled with all his strength,
urging the board up to the greatest
speed that he could manage. It
seemed to respond very sluggishly,
so that he was barely crawling
along the water. He dared not look
back, but he knew that the wave

158 WORLDS OF TOMORROW
was rising swiftly behind him, for
he could hear its roar growing
closer and louder every second.

Then it gripped the board, ^ and
his furious paddling became as use-
less as it was unnecessary. He was
in the power of an irresistible force,
so overwhelming that his puny ef-
forts could neither help nor hinder
it. He could only accept it.

H is first sensation, when the
wave had taken him, was one
of surprising calm. The board felt
almost as steady as if moving on
rails. And though this was surely
an illusion, it even seemed to have
become quiet, as if he had left the
noise and tumult behind. The only
sound of which he was really con-
scious was the seething hiss of the
foam as it boiled around him, froth-
ing over his head so that he was
completely blinded. He was like a
bareback rider on a runaway horse,
unable to see anything because its
mane was streaming in his face.

The board had been well de-
signed and Johnny had a good sense
of balance. His instincts kept him
poised on the wave. Automatically
he moved backwards or forwards
by fractions of an inch, to adjust
his trim and to keep the board level;
and presently he found that he
could see again. The line of foam
had retreated amidships. His head
and shoulders were clear of the
whistling, blinding spray, and only
the wind was blowing in his face.

As well it might be, for he was
surely moving at thirty or forty
miles an hour. Not even Susie or
Sputnik — not even Snowy —

could match the speed at which he
was travelling now. He was bal-
anced on the crest of a wave so
enormous that he would not have
believed it possible. It made him
giddy to look down into the trough
beneath.

The beach was scarcely a hun-
dred yards away, and the wave was
beginning to curl over, only a few
seconds before its final collapse.
This, Johnny knew, was the mo-
ment of greatest danger. If the wave
fell upon him now, it would pound
him to pulp against the sea-bed.

Beneath him, he felt the board
beginning to seesaw — to tilt nose
down in that sickening plunge that
would end everything. The wave he
was riding was deadlier than any
monster of the sea — and immeas-
urably more powerful. Unless he
checked this forward lurch he
would slide down the curving cliff
of water, while the unsupported
overhang of the wave grew larger
and larger until at last it came
crashing down upon him.

With infinite care he eased his
weight back along the board. The
nose slowly lifted. But he dared not
move too far back, for he knew
that if he did so he would slide off
the shoulders of this wave and be
left for the one behind to pulverize.
He had to keep in exact, precar-
ious balance, on the very peak of
this mountain of foam and fury.

The mountain was beginning to
sink beneath him, and he sank with
it, stiD holding the board level, as
it flattened into a hill. Then it was
only a mound of moving foam, all
its strength stolen from it by the

braking action of the beach.
Through the now aimless swirl of
foam the board still darted forward,
coasting like an arrow under its
own momentum. Then there came
a sudden jolt, a long snaky slither
— and Johnny found himself look-
ing, not at moving water, but at
motionless sand.

At almost the same instant he
was grabbed by firm hands and
hoisted to his feet.

There were voices all round him,
but he was still deafened by the
roar of the sea and heard only a
few scattered phrases like “Crazy
young fool — lucky to be alive —
not one of our kids.”

“I’m all right,” he muttered, shak-
ing himself free.

Then he turned back, wondering
if he could see any sign of Sput-
nik and Susie beyond the breakers.
But he forgot all about them in that
shattering moment of truth.

For the first time, as he stared
at the mountainous waves storm-
ing and smoking towards him, he
saw what he had ridden through.
This was something that no man
could hope to do twice. He was in-
deed lucky to be alive.

Then his legs turned to water as
the reaction hit him; and he was
thankful to sit down, clutching with
both hands at the firm, welcoming
Australian soil.

xxn

ttXT'ou can go in now,” said
1 - Nurse Tessie. “But only five
minutes, remember. He’s not very
strong yet, and he hasn’t quite got

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 159
over his lost visitor.” She winked.

Johnny knew all about that. Two
days before, Mrs. Kazan had de-
scended upon the island “like a
troop of Cossacks,” as someone had
said with only slight exaggeration
She had made a vigorous attempt
to whisk the Professor back to
Moscow for treatment, and it had
taken all of Tessie’s determination
and the Professor’s wiliness to frus-
trate her. Even then they might
have been defeated, but luckily the
doctor who flew over from the
mainland every day had given strict
orders that his patient must not be
moved for at least a week. So Mrs.
Kazan had left for Sydney, to see
what Australia could offer in the
way of culture — which was now a
very great deal. She would be back,
she promised, in exactly one week.

Johnny tiptoed into the sick-
room. At first he could hardly see
Professor Kazan, who was lying in
bed entirely surrounded by books,
quite unaware that he had com-
pany. It was at least a minute be-
fore the Professor noticed his visi-
tor, hurriedly put down the book
that he was reading and extended
his hand in welcome.

“I’m so pleased to see you, John-
ny. Thank you for everything. You
took a very big risk.”

Johnny made no attempt to deny
it. The risk had been far greater
than he had dreamed, when he had
set out from Dolphin Island a week
ago. Perhaps if he had known —
but he had done it, and that was
all that mattered.

“I’m glad I went,” he answered
simply.

1M WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“So am I,” said the ProfessOT.
"Nurse says the Red Cross ‘copter
was just in time.”

There was a long, awkward si-
lence. Then Professor Kazan went
on, in a lighter tone.

“How did you like the Queens-
landers?”

“Oh, theyYe wonderful people —
though it was a long time before
they’d believe I came from Dol-
phin Island.”

“I’m not surprised,” said the Pro-
fessor dryly. “And what did you do
while you were over there?”

“Well, I can’t remember how
many TV and radio broadcasts I
had to make. I got rather fed up
with them. But the best part was
the surfriding. When the sea was
calmer, they took me out and real-
ly showed me all the tricks. I’m
now,” he added with pride, “an
Honorary Life Member of the
Queensland Surf Club.”

“That’s fine,” answered the Pro-
fessor, a little absently. It was ob-
vious to Johnny that he had some-
thing on his mind; and presently
he brought it out.

“Now, Johnny,” he said. “I’ve had
time to do a lot of thinking these
last few days, while I’ve been lying
here. And I’ve come to a good
many decisions.”

That sounded faintly ominous,
and Johnny wondered what was
coming next.

“In particular,” continued the
Professor, “I’ve been worrying
about your future. You’re seven-
teen now, and it’s time you looked
ahead.”

“You know that I want to stay

here. Professor,” said Johnny in
some alarm. “All my friends are on
the island.”

“Yes, I know that. But there’s
the important matter of your educa-
tion. OSCAR can only take you
part of the way. If you want to do
anything useful, you’ll have to spe-
cialize and develop whatever tal-
ents you have. Don’t you agree?”
“I suppose so,” Johnny answered
without enthusiasm. Where was all
this leading? he wondered.

“What I’m suggesting,” said the
Professor, “is that we get you into
the University of Queensland next
semester. Don’t look so upset. It’s
not the other side of the world.
Brisbane’s only an hour from here,
and you can get back any week-
end. But you can’t spend all your
life skindiving round the reef!”
Johnny decided that he would be
quite willing to try, but in his heart
he knew that the Professor was
right.

“You have skills and enthusiasms
we need badly,” said Professor Kaz-
an. “What you still lack is disci-
pline and knowledge — and you’ll
get both at the University. Then
you’ll be able to play a big part in
the plans I have for the future.”
“What plans?” asked Johnny, a
little more hopefully.

“I think you know most of them.
They all add up to this — mutual
aid between men and dolphins, to
the advantage of both. In the last
few months we’ve found some of
the things we can do together, but
that’s only a feeble beginning. Fish-
herding, pearl-diving, rescue opera-
tions, beach patrols, wreck surveys.

water sports — oh, there are hun-
dreds of ways that dolphins can
help us! And there are much bigger
things — ”

For a moment, he was tempted
to mention that sunken spaceship,
lost back in the Stone Age. But he
and Keith had decided to say noth-
ing about that until they had more
definite information. It was the
Professor’s ace in the hole, not to
be played until the right moment.
One day, when he felt that it was
time to increase his budget, he was
going to try that piece of dolphin
mythology on the Space Adminis-
tration, and wait for the dollars to
roll in. . .

“What about the killer whales.
Professor?”

“That’s a long-term problem, and
there’s no simple answer to it at
the moment. Electrical condition-
ing is only one of the tools we’ll
have to use, when we’ve decided
on the best policy. But I think I
know the final solution.”

He pointed to the low table at
the other side of the room.

“Bring over that globe, please,
Johnny.”

Johnny carried across the 12”
globe of the Earth, and the Pro-
fessor spun it on its axis.

“Look here,” he said. “I’ve been
thinking about Reservations — Dol-
phins Only, Out of Bounds to killer
whales. TTie Mediterranean and the
Red Sea are the obvious places to
start. It would take only about a
hundred miles of fencing to seal

PEOPLE OF THE SEA 161
them off from the oceans and to
make them quite safe.”

“Fencing?” asked Johnny incred-
ulously.

The Professor was enjoying him-
self. Despite Nurse’s warning, he
looked quite capable of going on
for hours.

“Oh, I don’t mean wire netting
or any solid barrier. But when we
know enough Orcan to talk to kill-
er whales, we can use underwater
sound projectors to shepherd them
around, and to keep them out of
places where we don’t want them
to go. A few speakers in the Straits
of Gibraltar, a few in the Gulf of
Aden — that will make two seas
safe for dolphins. And later, per-
haps we can fence off the Pacific
from the Atlantic, and give one
ocean to the dolphins and the other
to the killer whales. . . See, it’s not
far from Cape Horn to the Ant-
arctic, the Bering Strait’s easy, and
only the gap south of Australia will
be hard to close. The whaling in- '
dustry’s been talking about this
sort of operation for years and,
sooner or later it’s going to be
done.”

He smiled at the rather dazed
look on Johnny’s face, and came
back to earth.

“If you think that half my ideas
are crazy, you’re quite right. But
we don’t know which half, and
that’s what we’ve got to find out.
Now do you understand why I
want you to go to College? It’s for
my own selfish reasons, as well as
your own good.”

Before Johnny could do more
than nod in reply, the door opened.

162 WORLDS OF TOMORROW

“I said five minutes, and you’ve
had ten,” grumbled Nurse Tessie.
“Out you go. And here’s your milk,
Professor.”

Professor Kazan said something
in Russian which conveyed, quite
clearly, the impression that he
didn’t like milk. But he was already
drinking it by the time that Johnny,
in a very thoughtful mood, had left
the room.

H e walked down to the beach
along the narrow path that
wound through the forest. Most
of tile fallen trees had been cleared
away, and already the hurricane
seemed like a nightmare.

The tide was in, covering most
of the reef with a sheet of water
nowhere more than two or three
feet deep. A gentle breeze was

playing across It, producing the
most curious and beautiful effects.
In some areas the water was flat
and oily, still as the surface of a
mirror. But in others, it was cor-
rugated into billions of tiny ripples,
sparkling and twinkling like jewels
as their ever-changing curves re-
flected the sunlight.

The reef was lovely and peace-
ful now. For the last year it had
been his whole world. But wider
worlds were beckoning; he must lift
his eyes to further horizons.

He no longer felt depressed by
the prospect of the years of study
still ahead. That would be hard
work, but it would also be a pleas-
ure. There were so many things he
wanted to learn about the sea.

And about its People, who were
now his friends. END

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ ★★★★★★

Coming ••• Tomorrow

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